Perhaps it was almost a relief both to Frithiof and to Sigrid that, just
at this time, all intercourse with Rowan Tree House should become
impossible. Lance and Gwen had sickened with scarlatina, and, of course,
all communication was at end for some time to come; it would have been
impossible that things should have gone on as before after Frithiof’s
trouble: he was far too proud to permit such a thing, though the
Bonifaces would have done their best utterly to forget what had
happened. It would moreover have been difficult for Sigrid to fall back
in her former position of familiar friendship after her last interview
with Roy. So that, perhaps, the only person who sighed over the
separation was Cecil, and she was fortunately kept so busy by her little
patients that she had not time to think much of the future. Whenever the
thought did cross her mind—“How is all this going to end?”—such
miserable perplexity seized her that she was glad to turn back to the
present, which, however painful, was at any rate endurable. But the
strain of that secret anxiety, and the physical fatigue of nursing the
two children, began to tell on her, she felt worn and old, and the look
that always frightened Mrs. Boniface came back to her face—the look that
made the poor mother think of the two graves in Norwood Cemetery.
By the middle of August, Lance and Gwen had recovered, and were taken
down to the seaside, while Rowan Tree House was delivered into the hands
of the painters and whitewashers to be thoroughly disinfected. But in
spite of lovely weather that summer’s holiday proved a very dreary one.
Roy was in the depths of depression, and it seemed to Cecil that a great
shadow had fallen upon everything.
“Robin,” said Mrs. Boniface, “I want you to take that child to
Switzerland for a month; this place is doing her no good at all. She
wants change and mountain air.”
So the father and mother plotted and planned, and in September Cecil,
much against her will, was packed off to Switzerland to see
snow-mountains, and waterfalls, when all the time she would far rather
been seeing the prosaic heights of the model lodging-houses, and the
dull London streets. Still, being a sensible girl, she did her best with
what was put before her, and, though her mind was a good deal with
Sigrid and Frithiof in their trouble and anxiety, yet physically she
gained great good from the tour, and came back with a color in her
cheeks which satisfied her mother.
“By-the-by, dearie,” remarked Mrs. Boniface, the day after her return,
“your father thought you would like to hear the _Elijah_ to-night at the
Albert Hall, and he has left you two tickets.”
“Why, Albani is singing, is she not?” cried Cecil. “Oh yes; I should
like to go of all things!”
“Then I tell you what we will do; we will send a card and ask Mrs.
Horner to go with you, for it’s the Church meeting to-night, and father
and I do not want to miss it.”
Cecil could make no objection to this, though her pleasure was rather
damped by the prospect of having Mrs. Horner as her companion. There was
little love lost between them, for the innate refinement of the one
jarred upon the innate vulgarity of the other, and _vice versâ_.
It was a little after seven o’clock when Cecil drove to the Horners’
house and was ushered into the very gorgeous drawing-room. It was empty,
and by a sort of instinct which she could never resist, she crossed over
to the fireplace and gazed up at the clock, which ever since her
childhood had by its ugliness attracted her much as a moth is attracted
to a candle. It was a huge clock with a little white face and a great
golden rock, upon which golden pigs browsed with a golden swineherd in
attendance.
“My dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Horner, entering with a perturbed face, “did
not my letter reach you in time? I made sure it would. The fact is, I am
not feeling quite up to going out to-night. Could you find any one else,
do you think, who would go with you?”
Cecil thought for a moment.
“Sigrid would have liked it, but I know she is too busy just now,” she
remarked.
“And, oh, my dear, far better go alone than take Miss Falck!” said Mrs.
Horner. “I shall never forget what I endured when I took her with me to
hear Corney Grain; she laughed aloud, my dear; laughed till she
positively cried, and even went so far as to clap her hands. It makes me
hot to think of it even.”
Mrs. Horner belonged to that rather numerous section of English people
who think that it is a sign of good breeding to show no emotion. She had
at one time been rather taken by Sigrid’s charming manner, but the
Norwegian girl was far too simple and unaffected, far too spontaneous,
to remain long in Mrs. Horner’s good books; she had no idea of enjoying
things in a placid, conventional, semi-bored way, and her clear, ringing
laugh was in itself an offense. Mrs. Horner herself never gave more than
a polite smile, or at times, when her powers of restraint were too much
taxed, a sort of uncomfortable gurgle in her throat, with compressed
lips, which gallantly tried to strangle her unseemly mirth.
“I always enjoy going anywhere with Sigrid,” said Cecil, who, gentle as
she was, would never consent to be over-ridden by Mrs. Horner. “It seems
to me that her wonderful faculty for enjoying everything is very much to
be envied. However, there is no chance of her going to-night; I will
call and see whether one of the Greenwoods is disengaged.”
So with hasty farewells she went off, laughing to herself as the cab
rattled along to think of Mrs. Horner’s discomfort and Sigrid’s intense
appreciation of Corney Grain. Fate, however, seemed to be against her;
her friends, the Greenwoods, were out for the evening, and there was
nothing left for it but to drive home again, or else to go in alone and
trust to finding Roy afterward. To sacrifice her chance of hearing the
_Elijah_ with Albani as soprano merely to satisfy Mrs. Grundy was too
much for Cecil. She decided to go alone, and, writing a few words on a
card asking Roy to come to her at the end of the oratorio, she sent it
to the _artistes’_ room by one of the attendants, and settled herself
down to enjoy the music, secretly rather glad to have an empty chair
instead of Mrs. Horner beside her.
All at once the color rushed to her cheeks, for, looking up, she saw
Frithiof crossing the platform; she watched him place the score on the
conductor’s desk, and turn to answer the question of some one in the
orchestra, then disappear again within the swing-doors leading to the
back regions. She wondered much what he was thinking of as he went
through his prosaic duties so rapidly, wondered if his mind was away in
Norway all the time—whether autumn had brought to him, as she knew it
generally did, the strong craving for his old life of adventure—the
longing to handle a gun once more; or whether, perhaps, his trouble had
overshadowed even that, and whether he was thinking instead of that
baffling mystery which had caused them all so much pain. And all through
the oratorio she seemed to be hearing everything with his ears;
wondering how the choruses would strike him, or hoping that he was in a
good place for hearing Albani’s exquisite rendering of “Hear ye,
Israel.” She wondered a little that Roy did not come to her, or, at any
rate, send her some message, and at the end of the last chorus began to
feel a little anxious and uncomfortable. At last, to her great relief,
she saw Frithiof coming toward her.
“Your brother has never come,” he said, in reply to her greeting. “I
suppose this fog must have hindered him, for he told me he should be
here; and I have been expecting him every moment.”
“Is the fog so bad as all that?” said Cecil, rather anxiously.
“It was very bad when I came,” said Frithiof. “However, by good luck, I
managed to grope my way to Portland Road, and came down by the
Metropolitan. Will you let me see you home?”
“Thank you, but it is so dreadfully out of your way. I should be very
glad if you would, only it is troubling you so much.”
Something in her eager yet half-shy welcome, and in the sense that she
was one of the very few who really believed in him, filled Frithiof with
a happiness which he could scarcely have explained to himself.
“You will be giving me a very great pleasure,” he said. “I expect there
will be a rush on the trains. Shall we try for a cab?”
So they walked out together into the dense fog, Cecil with a blissful
sense of confidence in the man who piloted her so adroitly through the
crowd, and seemed so astonishingly cool and indifferent amid the
perilous confusion of wheels and hoofs, which always appeared in the
quarter where one least expected them.
At last, after much difficulty, Frithiof secured a hansom, and put her
into it. She was secretly relieved that he got in too.
“I will come back with you if you will allow me,” he said; “for I am not
quite sure whether this is not a more dangerous part of the adventure
than when we were on foot. I never saw such a fog! Why, we can’t even
see the horse, much less where he is going.”
“How thankful I am that you were here! It would have been dreadful all
alone,” said Cecil; and she explained to him how Mrs. Horner had failed
her at the last moment.
He made no comment, but in his heart he was glad that both Mrs. Horner
and Roy should have proved faithless, and that the duty of seeing Cecil
home had devolved upon him.
“You have not met my mother since she came back from the sea,” said
Cecil. “Are you still afraid of infection? The house has been thoroughly
painted and fumigated.”
“Oh, it is not that,” said Frithiof “but while this cloud is still over
me, I can’t come. You do not realize how it affects everything.”
Perhaps she realized much more than he fancied, but she only said.
“It does not affect your own home.”
“No, that’s true,” said Frithiof. “It has made me value that more, and
it has made me value your friendship more. But, you see, you are the
only one at Rowan Tree House who still believes in me; and how you
manage to do it passes my comprehension—when there is nothing to prove
me innocent.”
“None of the things which we believe in most can be absolutely proved,”
said Cecil. “I can’t logically justify my belief in you any more than in
our old talks I could justify my belief in the unseen world.”
“Do you remember that first Sunday when I was staying with you, and you
asked me whether I had found a Norwegian church!”
“Yes, very well. It vexed me so much to have said anything about it; but
you see, I had always lived with people who went to church or chapel as
regularly as they took their meals.”
“Well, do you know I was wrong; there is a Norwegian church down near
the Commercial Docks at Rotherhithe.”
And then lured on by her unspoken sympathy, and favored by the darkness,
he told her of the strong influence which the familiar old chorale had
had upon him, and how it had carried him back to the time of his
confirmation—that time which to all Norwegians is full of deep meaning
and intense reality, so that even in the indifferentism of later years
and the fogs of doubt which pain and trouble conjure up, its memory
still lingers, ready to be touched into life at the very first
opportunity.
“It is too far for Sigrid and Swanhild to go very often, but to me it is
like a bit of Norway planted down in this great wilderness of houses,”
he said. “It was strange that I should have happened to come across it
so unexpectedly just at the time when I most needed it.”
“But that surely is what always happens,” said Cecil. “When we really
need a thing we get it.”
“You learned before I did to distinguish between needing and wanting,”
said Frithiof. “It comes to some people easily, I suppose. But I, you
see, had to lose everything before understanding—to lose even my
reputation for common honesty. Even now it seems to be hardly possible
that life should go on under such a cloud as that. Yet the days pass
somehow, and I believe that it was this trouble which drove me to what I
really needed.”
“It is good of you to tell me this,” said Cecil. “It seems to put a
meaning into this mystery which is always puzzling me and seeming so
useless and unjust. By the by, Roy tells me that Darnell has left.”
“Yes,” said Frithiof, “he left at Michaelmas. Things have been rather
smoother since then.”
“I can’t help thinking that his leaving just now is in direct evidence
against him,” said Cecil. “Sigrid and I suspected him from the first. Do
you not suspect him?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I do. But without any reason.”
“Why did he go?”
“His wife was ill, and was ordered to a warmer climate. He has taken a
situation at Plymouth. After all, there is no real evidence against him,
and a great deal of evidence against me. How is it that you suspect
him?”
“It is because I know you had nothing to do with it,” said Cecil.
He had guessed what her answer would be, yet loved to hear her say the
words.
It seemed to him that the dense fog, and the long drive at foot pace,
and the anxiety to see the right way, and the manifold difficulties and
dangers of this night, resembled his own life. And then it struck him
how tedious the drive would have been to him but for Cecil’s presence,
and he saw how great a difference her trust and friendship made to him.
He had always liked her, but now gratitude and reverence woke a new
feeling in his heart. Blanche’s faithlessness had so crippled his life
that no thought of love in the ordinary sense of the word—of love
culminating in marriage—came to his mind. But yet his heart went out to
Cecil, and a new influence crept into his life—an influence that
softened his hardness, that quieted his feverish impatience, that
strengthened him to endure.
“Sigrid and Swanhild have been away with Mme. Lechertier, have they
not?” asked Cecil, after a silence.
“Yes, they went to Hastings for a fortnight. We shut up the rooms, and I
went down to Herr Sivertsen, who was staying near Warlingham, a charming
little place in the Surrey hills.”
“Sigrid told me you were with him, but I fancied she meant in London.”
“No; once a year he tears himself from his dingy den in Museum Street,
and goes down to this place. We were out of doors most of the day, and
in the evening worked for four or five hours at a translation of Darwin
which he is very anxious to get finished. Hullo! what is wrong?”
He might well ask, for the horse was kicking and plunging violently.
Shouts and oaths echoed through the murky darkness. Then they could just
make out the outline of another horse at right angles with their own. He
was almost upon them, struggling frantically, and the shaft of the cab
belonging to him would have struck Cecil violently in the face had not
Frithiof seized it and wrenched it away with all his force. Then,
suddenly, the horse was dragged backward, their hansom shivered, reeled,
and finally fell on its side.
Cecil’s heart beat fast, she turned deadly white, just felt in the
horrible moment of falling a sense of relief when Frithiof threw his arm
around her and held her fast; then for an interval realized nothing at
all, so stunning was the violence with which they came to the ground.
Apparently both the cabs had gone over and were lying in an
extraordinary entanglement, while both horses seemed to be still on
their feet, to judge by the sounds of kicking and plunging. The danger
was doubled by the blinding fog, which made it impossible to realize
where one might expect hoofs.
“Are you hurt?” asked Frithiof anxiously.
“No,” replied Cecil, gasping for breath. “Only shaken. How are we to get
out?”
He lifted her away from him, and managed with some difficulty to
scramble up. Then, before she had time to think of the peril, he had
taken her in his arms, and, rashly perhaps, but very dexterously,
carried her out of danger. Had she not trusted him so entirely it would
have been a dreadful minute to her; and even as it was she turned sick
and giddy as she was lifted up, and heard hoofs in perilous proximity,
and felt Frithiof cautiously stepping out into that darkness that might
be felt, and swaying a little beneath her weight.
“Wont you put me down?—I am too heavy for you,” she said. But, even as
she spoke, she felt him shake with laughter at the idea.
“I could carry you for miles, now that we are safely out of the wreck,”
he said. “Here is a curbstone, and—yes, by good luck, the steps of a
house. Now, shall we ring up the people and ask them to shelter you
while I just lend a hand with the cab?”
“No, no, it is so late, I will wait here. Take care you don’t get hurt.”
He disappeared into the fog, and she understood him well enough to know
that he would keenly enjoy the difficulty of getting matters straight
again.
“I think accidents agree with you,” she said laughingly, when by and by
he came back to her, seeming unusually cheerful.
“I can’t help laughing now to think of the ridiculous way in which both
cabs went down and both horses stood up,” he said. “It is wonderful that
more damage was not done. We all seem to have escaped with bruises, and
nothing is broken except the shafts.”
“Let us walk home now,” said Cecil “Does any one know whereabout we
are?”
“The driver says it is Battersea Bridge Road, some way from Rowan Tree
House, you see, but, if you would not be too tired, it would certainly
be better not to stay for another cab.”
So they set off, and, with much difficulty, at length groped their way
to Brixton, not getting home till long after midnight. At the door
Frithiof said good-by, and for the first time since the accident Cecil
remembered his trouble; in talking of many things she had lost sight of
it, but now it came back to her with a swift pang, all the harder to
bear because of the happiness of the last half-hour.
“You must not go back without resting and having something to eat,” she
said pleadingly.
“You are very kind,” he replied, “but I can not come in.”
“But I shall be so unhappy about you, if you go all that long way back
without food; come in, if it is only to please me.”
Something in her tone touched him, and at that moment the door was
opened by Mr. Boniface himself.
“Why, Cecil,” he cried. “We have been quite anxious about you.”
“Frithiof saw me home because of the fog,” she explained. “And our
hansom was overturned at Battersea, so we have had to walk from there.
Please ask Frithiof to come in, father, we are so dreadfully cold and
hungry, yet he will insist on going straight home.”
“It’s not to be thought of,” said Mr. Boniface. “Come in, come in, I
never saw such a fog.”
So once more Frithiof found himself in the familiar house which always
seemed so homelike to him, and for the first time since his disgrace he
shook hands with Mrs. Boniface; she was kindness itself, and yet somehow
the meeting was painful and Frithiof wished himself once more in the
foggy streets. Cecil seemed intuitively to know how he felt, for she
talked fast and gayly as though to fill up the sense of something
wanting which was oppressing him.
“I am sure we are very grateful to you,” said Mrs. Boniface, when she
had heard all about the adventure, and his rescue of Cecil. “I can’t
think what Cecil would have done without you. As for Roy, finding it so
foggy and having a bad headache, he came home early and is now gone to
bed. But come in and get warm by the fire. I don’t know why we are all
standing in the hall.”
She led the way into the drawing-room, and Cecil gave a cry of
astonishment, for, standing on the hearth-rug was a little figure in a
red dressing-gown, looking very much like a wooden Noah in a toy ark.
“Why, Lance,” she cried, “you up at this time of night!”
The little fellow flew to meet her and clung round her neck.
“I really couldn’t exackly help crying,” he said, “for I couldn’t keep
the tears out of my eyes.”
“He woke up a few minutes ago,” said Mrs. Boniface, “and finding your
bed empty thought that something dreadful had happened to you, and as
nurse was asleep I brought him down here, for he was so cold and
frightened.”
By this time Lance had released Cecil and was clinging to Frithiof.
“Gwen and me’s been ill,” he said proudly, “and I’ve grown a whole inch
since you were here last. My throat doesn’t hurten me now at all.”
The happy unconsciousness of the little fellow seemed to thaw Frithiof
at once, the wretched five-pound note ceased to haunt him as he sat with
Lance on his knee, and he ate without much thought the supper that he
had fancied would choke him. For Lance, who was faithful to his old
friends, entirely refused to leave him, but serenely ate biscuits and
begged stray sips of his hot cocoa, his merry childish talk filling up
the gaps in a wonderful way and setting them all at their ease.
“Had you not better stay here for the night?” said Mrs. Boniface
presently. “I can’t bear to think of your having that long walk through
the fog.”
“You are very kind,” he said, “but Sigrid would be frightened if I
didn’t turn up,” and kissing Lance, he sat him down on the hearthrug,
and rose to go. Cecil’s thanks and warm hand-clasp lingered with him
pleasantly, and he set out on his walk home all the better for his visit
to Rowan Tree House.