I.
After luncheon at the table d'hôte of the Britannia Hotel at Dronthjem, the friends made their way along the broad, quiet streets with their low, wooden houses, and they had left the town, going in the direction of the Gjeitfjeld, when they overtook, in the village of Ihlen, an elderly gentleman with a young girl, evidently bent on the same excursion. The pair had sat a few places off at the table d'hôte, and as this much acquaintance justified a recognition in so lonely a spot, Westhove and his friend lifted their hats. The old gentleman immediately asked, in English, whether they knew the road to the Gjeitfjeld: he and his daughter—who, during the colloquy, never looked up from her "Baedeker"—could not agree on the subject. This difference of opinion led to a conversation: the two young men begged to be allowed to join them, Frank being of opinion that "Baedeker" was right.
"Papa will never believe in 'Baedeker!'" said the young lady with a quiet smile, as she closed the red volume she had been consulting. "Nor will he ever trust me when I tell him I will guide him safely."
"Are you always so sure of knowing your way?" said Frank, laughing.
"Always!" she saucily declared, with a gay laugh.
Bertie inquired how long a walk it was, and what was to be seen at the end of it; Frank's everlasting walks were a weariness and a bore. During his residence with his friend he had so spoiled himself, in order to forget his former wretchedness, that he now knew no greater pleasure than that of lying on a bench with a cigar, or a glass of port, and, above all, would avoid every exertion. But now, abroad—when a man is travelling—he cannot for ever sit dozing in his hotel. Besides, he was quite stiff with riding in a carriole; all this useless rushing about was really monstrous folly, and White-Rose Cottage was not such a bad place. Frank, on the contrary, thoroughly enjoyed the clear, invigorating air of this brilliant summer day, and he drank in the sunshine as though it were fine wine cooled by a fresh mountain breeze; his step was elastic and his voice had a contented ring.
"Are you an Englishman?" asked the gentleman.
Westhove explained that they were Dutch, that they lived in London; and his tone had the frank briskness which a man instinctively adopts to fellow-travellers, as sharing his lot for the moment, when the weather is fine and the landscape pleasing. Their sympathy being thus aroused by their admiration of Norwegian scenery, they walked on side by side, the elder man stepping out bravely, the young lady very erect, with her fine figure moulded in a simple, close-fitting blue cloth dress, to which a cape with several folds—something like an elegant type of coach-man's cape—lent a dash of smartness. She wore a sort of jockey-cap, with a mannish air, on her thick twists of ruddy-gold hair.
Bertie alone could not understand how all this could be called pleasure; but he made no complaint. He spoke little, not thinking it necessary to make himself agreeable to people whom he might probably never set eyes on again after the morrow. So he just kept up with them, wondering at Frank, who had at once plunged into eager conversation with the young lady, but perceiving on a sudden that his own politeness and tact were a mere superficial varnish as compared with Frank's instinctive good breeding. At that moment, for the first time, notwithstanding his better features and natty travelling costume, he felt himself so far Frank's inferior that a surge of fury resembling hate thrilled through him. He could not bear this sense of inferiority, so he approached the old gentleman, and walking by his side forced himself to a show of respectful amiability. As they followed the windings of the upward and diminishing path they by degrees lagged behind Frank and his companion, and thus climbed the hill two and two.
"So you live in London. What is your name?" asked the young lady, with calm curiosity.
"Frank Westhove."
"My name is Eva Rhodes; my father is Sir Archibald Rhodes, of Rhodes Grove. And your friend?"
"His name is Robert van Maeren."
"I like the sound of your name best. I believe I can say it like English. Tell it me again."
He repeated his name, and she said it after him with her English accent. It was very funny, and they laughed over it—"Fraank, Fraank Westhoove." And then they looked back.
"Papa, are you tired?" cried Eva. The old man was toiling up the height with his broad shoulders bent; his face was red under his travelling cap, which he had pushed to the back of his head, and he was blowing like a Triton. Bertie tried to smile pleasantly, though he was inwardly raging in high dudgeon over this senseless clamber. They had half an hour more of it, however, before the narrow track, which zigzagged up the hill-side like a grey arabesque, came to an end, and they sat down to rest on a block of stone.
Eva was enchanted. Far below lay Dronthjem with its modern houses, encircled by the steely waters of the Nid and its fjord, a magic mirror on which floated the white mass of the fortress of Munkenholm. The mountains rising on all sides were blue; nearest to them the bloomy, purple blue of the grape; then the deep sheeny blue of velvet; further off the transparent, crystalline blue of the sapphire, and in the distance the tender sky-blue of the turquoise. The water was blue, like blue silver; the very air was blue as pearls are or mother-of-pearls. The equable sunlight fell on everything, without glare and without shadow, from exactly overhead.
"It is almost like Italy!" exclaimed Eva. "And this is Norway! I had always pictured Norway to myself as being all like Romsdal, wild and barren, with rocky peaks like the Romsdalhorn and the Trolltinder, and with raging cascades like the Sletta fos; but this is quite lovely, and so softly blue! I should like to build a house here and live in it, and I would called it Eva's Bower, and keep a whole flock of white doves; they would look so pretty flying in the blue air."
"Dear child!" laughed Sir Archibald. "It looks very different in winter, I suspect."
"No doubt different, but still lovely. In winter I should love the fury of raging winds, and the roar of the waves of the fjord below my house, and grey mists would hang over the hills! I can see it all!"
"Why, you would be frozen," argued the father, gravely.
"Oh no; and I should sit at my turret window dreaming over Dante or Spenser. Do you love Dante and Spenser?"
The question was addressed to Frank, who had listened somewhat puzzled to Eva's raptures, and was now a little startled; for, you see, though he knew Dante by name, he had never even heard of the poet Spenser; only of Herbert Spencer.
"What, do you not know the Faery Queen, Una, and the Red-cross Knight, and Britomart? How very strange."
"Dear child, what a little fanatic you are over those silly allegories!" said papa.
"But they are glorious, papa!" Eva insisted. "Besides, I love allegory above all things, and admire no other kind of poetry."
"The style is so affected! You are drowned in symbolism!"
"It is the keynote of the Renaissance," Eva protested. "In the time of Elizabeth all the Court talked in that high-flown style. And Edmund Spenser's images are splendid; they sparkle like jewels!"
Bertie thought this discourse much too learned, but he kept his opinion to himself, and made some remark about Dante's "Inferno." They were by this time rested and went on again up the hill.
"My daughter is half an 'Esthetic,'" said the old gentleman, laughing. And Eva laughed too.
"Nay. That is not the truth, papa. Do not believe him Mr.—Mr. Westhove. Do you know what makes papa say so? A few years ago, when I had but just left school, I and a few girls I knew were perfectly idiotic for a while. We towzled our hair into mops, dressed in floppy garments of damask and brocade with enormous sleeves, and held meetings among ourselves to talk nonsense about art. We sat in attitudes, holding a sunflower or a peacock's feather, and were perfectly ridiculous. That is why papa still says such things. I am not so silly now. But I am still very fond of reading; and is that so very esthetic?"
Frank looked smilingly into her honest, clear, grey eyes, and her ringing, decided voice had an apologetic tone, as if she were asking pardon for her little display of learning. He understood that there was nothing of the blue-stocking in this girl, as might have seemed from her sententious jest before, and he was quite vexed with himself for having been compelled to confess that he knew nothing of the poet Spenser. How stupid she must think him!
But it was a moment when the beauties of the scenery had so bewitched them that they moved, as it were, in a magic circle of sympathy, in which some unknown law overruled their natural impulses, something electrically swift and ethereally subtle.
As they climbed the meandering mountain track, or made short cuts through the low brushwood, where the leaves glistened in the sun like polished green needles, and as he breathed that pure, intoxicating air, Frank felt as though he had known her quite a long time, as if it were years since he had first seen her at the table d'hôte at Dronthjem. And Sir Archibald and Bertie, lingering behind, were far off—miles away—mere remembered images. Eva's voice joined with his own in harmonious union, as though their fragmentary talk of art and poetry were a duet which they both knew how to sing, although Frank candidly confessed that he had read but little, and that what he had read he scarcely remembered. She playfully scolded him, and her sweet clear tones now and then startled a bird, which flew piping out of the shrubs. He felt within him a revival of strength—a new birth; and would fain have spread his arms to embrace—the air!
II.
That evening, on their return from their walk, after dinner, over a cup of coffee, they discussed their further projects.
"We are going to Molde!" said Sir Archibald.
"And so are we!" Frank exclaimed.
The old gentleman at once expressed a wish that the friends would continue to give him and his daughter the pleasure of their society. Frank had taken a great fancy to him, and Bertie thought him courteous, and good company; Bertie had talked a good deal about America, but he had not told the whole history of his farming experiences in the far west; he had indeed idealised it a little by speaking of "My farm." And Frank did not contradict him.
By the end of two days spent at Dronthjem they were the best of friends; with that confidential intimacy which, on a tour, when etiquette is out of court, sometimes arises from mere contact, without any knowledge of character on either side, simply from sympathy in trifles and mutual attraction, a superficial sentiment of transient admiration which occupies the traveller's leisure. The day on the sea by steamboat to Molde was like a party of pleasure, in spite of the rain which drove them below; and in the cabin, over a bottle of champagne, Miss Eva and the three men played a rubber of whist. But afterwards, in a gleam of pale sunshine, there was an endless walk to and fro on the wet deck. The low rocky shore glided slowly past on the larboard side; the hills, varying in outline—now close together, and again showing a gap—covered with brown moss down by the water, and grey above with patches of pale rose or dull purple light. At Christiansand they were far from land, and the waters, now rougher, were crimson in the glory of the sinking sun, fast approaching the horizon. Every wave had a crest of flame-coloured foam, as though the ocean were on fire. Frank and Eva, meanwhile, pacing up and down, laughed at each other's faces, reddened like a couple of pæonies, or like two maskers rouged by the glow of the sun to the semblance of clowns.
They reached Molde late at night, too late to see its lovely fjord. But next morning, there it lay before them, a long, narrow inlet, encircled by mountains capped with snow; a poem, a song of mountains; pure, lofty, beautiful, severe, solemn, without one jarring note. The sky above them was calmly grey, like brooding melancholy, and the peace that reigned sounded like a passionless andante.
III.
Next day, when Sir Archibald proposed a walk up Moldehoï, Bertie declared that he was tired, and did not feel well, and begged to be left at home. In point of fact, he thought that the weather did not look promising; heavy clouds were gathering about the chain of hill-tops which shut in the fjord, like a sweeping drapery of rain, threatening ere long to fall and wrap everything in their gloomy folds. Eva, however, would not be checked by bad weather: when people were travelling they must not be afraid of a wetting. So the three set out; and Bertie, in his patent slippers, remained in the drawing-room of the Grand Hotel, with a book and a half-pint bottle.
The road was muddy, but they stepped out valiantly in their waterproofs and stout boots. The rain which hung threateningly above their heads did not daunt them, but gave a touch of romantic adventure to the expedition, as though it threatened to submerge them in an impending deluge. Once off the beaten road, and still toiling upwards, they occasionally missed the track, which was lost in a plashy bog, or under ferns dripping with rain, or struck across a wild growth of blue bilberries. They crossed the morass, using the rocks as stepping-stones; the old gentleman without help, and Eva with her hand in Frank's, fearing lest her little feet should slide on the smooth green moss. She laughed gaily, skipping from stone to stone with his help; sometimes suddenly slipping and supporting herself against his shoulder, and then again going on bravely, trying the stones with her stout stick. She felt as though she need take no particular heed, now that he was at her side; that he would support her if she stumbled; and they chatted eagerly as they went, almost leaping from rock to rock.
"What sort of man is your friend, Mr. Westhove?" Eva suddenly inquired.
Frank was a little startled; it was always an unpleasant task to give any information concerning Bertie, less on account of his past life than of his present position; his quiet sponging on himself, Frank, who, though enslaved by Bertie, knew full well that the situation was strange, to say the least of it, in the eyes of the world.
"Oh, he is a man who has been very unfortunate," he said evasively, and he presently added: "Has he not made a pleasant impression on you?"
Eva laughed so heartily that she was near falling into a pool of mud, if Frank had not firmly thrown his arm round her waist.
"Eva, Eva!" cried her father, shaking his head, "pray be more careful!"
Eva drew herself up with a slight blush.
"What can I say?" she went on, pursuing the subject. "If I were to speak the whole truth—"
"Of course."
"But perhaps you will be vexed; for I can see very plainly that you are quite infatuated with your friend."
"Then you do not like him?"
"Well then—if you insist on knowing: the first day, when I made his acquaintance, I thought him insufferable. With you we got on famously at once, as an amusing travelling companion, but with him—but perhaps he has not travelled much?"
"Oh yes, he has," said Frank, who could not help smiling.
"Well, then, perhaps he was shy or awkward. However, I began to think differently of him after that; I don't think him insufferable now."
It was strange, but Frank felt no particular satisfaction on hearing of the young lady's changed opinion; he made no reply.
"You say he has had much to trouble him. And, indeed, I can see it in his face. There is something so gentle in him, so tender, I might almost say; such soft, dark eyes, and such a sweet voice. At first, as I tell you, I found it intolerable, but now it strikes me as rather poetical. He must certainly be a poet, and have been crossed in love: he can be no commonplace man."
"No, that he certainly is not," said Frank, vaguely, a little ill-at-ease over Eva's raptures; and a mingling of jealousy and regret—something like an aversion for the worldly polish, and a dull envy of the poetic graces which Eva attributed to his friend, ran through his veins like a chill. He glanced up, almost pathetically, at the pretty creature, who was sometimes so shrewd and sometimes so naïve; so learned in all that bore on her favourite studies, so ignorant of real life. A dim compassion came over him, and on a sudden the grey rain-clouds weighed upon him with a pall of melancholy, as though they were ominous of some inevitable fatality which threatened to crush her. His fingers involuntarily clasped her hand more tightly.
"Here is the path once more!" cried Sir Archibald, who was twenty steps ahead of them.
"Oh yes! There is the path! Thank you, Mr. Westhove!" said Eva, and she sprang from the last stepping-stone, pushing her way through the snapping braken to the beaten track.
"And up there is the hut with the weathercock," her father went on. "I believe we have made a long round out of our way. Instead of chattering so much, you would do well to keep a sharp look-out for the path. My old eyes, you know—"
"But it was great fun jumping over the stones," laughed Eva.
Far above them they could now see the hut with the tall pole of the weathercock, and they went on at an easier pace, their feet sinking in the violet and pink blossomed heath, crushing the bilberries, dimly purple like tiny grapes. Eva stooped and picked some.
"Oh! so nice and sweet!" she exclaimed, with childish surprise, and she pulled some more, dyeing her lips and fingers blue with the juice of the berries. "Taste them, Mr. Westhove."
He took them from her soft, small hand, stained as it were with purple blood. It was true; they were deliciously sweet, and such fine ones!
And then they went on again, following Sir Archibald, often stopping, and triumphing like children when they came on a large patch where the whortleberries had spread unhindered like a miniature orchard.
"Papa, papa! Do try them!" Eva cried, heedless of the fact that papa was far ahead; but Sir Archibald was not out of sight, and they had to run to overtake him; Eva's laughter ringing like a bell, while she lamented that she must leave so many berries untouched—and such beauties!
"I daresay there will be plenty round the hut," said Frank, consolingly.
"Do you think so?" she said, with a merry laugh. "Oh, what a couple of babies we are!"
The path grew wider, and they found it easy walking up to the top, sometimes quitting the track and scrambling over the stones to shorten the way. Presently they heard a shout, and looking up, they saw Sir Archibald standing on the cairn in which the staff of the weathercock was fixed, and waving his travelling-cap. They hurried on, and soon were at his side. Eva knocked at the door of the hut.
"The hut is shut up," said her father.
"How stupid!" she exclaimed. "Why does it stand here at all if it is shut up? Does no one live in it?"
"Why, of course not," said Sir Archibald, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Frank helped Eva to climb the cairn round the pole, and they looked down on the panorama at their feet.
"It is beautiful, but melancholy," said Eva.
The long fjord lay below them, a narrow riband of pale, motionless water, hemmed in by the mountains, now wreathed with grey vapour, through which they gleamed fitfully like ghosts of mountains; Lauparen and Vengelinder, Trolltinder and Romsdalhorn, towering up through the envious, rolling mist, which, swelled by the coming storm, hung in black clouds from every peak and cast a gloomy reflection on the still waters. The hills were weeping—unsubstantial, motionless phantoms, sorrowing and tragical under some august and superhuman woe—a grief as of giants and demigods; the fjord, with its township, a plot of gardens, and roofs, and walls, and the white châlet of the Grand Hotel—all weeping, all motionless under the gloomy sky. A ghostly chill rose up from the gulf to where the trio stood, mingling with the tangible clamminess of the mist, which seemed to weigh on their eyelids. It was not raining, but the moisture seemed to distil on them from the black unbroken rack of clouds; and to the westwards, between two cliffs which parted to show a gleaming strip of ocean, a streak was visible of pale gold and faint rose-colour—hardly more than a touch of pink, a sparkle of gold—a stinted alms of the setting sun. They scarcely said another word, oppressed by the superhuman sadness which enwrapped them like a shroud. When Eva at last spoke her clear voice sounded far away—through a curtain.
"Look, there is a glint of sunshine over the sea. Here we are pining for the sun. Oh, I wish the sun would break through the clouds! It is so dismal here—so dreary! How well I understand Oswald's cry in Ibsen's 'Ghosts' when he is going mad: 'The sun, the sun!' Men might pray for sunshine here and get no more than that distant gleam. Oh, I am perished!"
She shivered violently under the stiff, shining folds of her waterproof cloak; her face was drawn and white, and her eyes looked large and anxious. She suddenly felt herself so forlorn and lonely that she instinctively took her father's arm and clung to him closely.
"Are you cold, my child; shall we go home?" he asked.
She nodded, and they both helped her down the heap of stones. Why, she knew not, but suddenly she had thought of her mother, who was dead, and wondered whether she had ever felt thus forlorn in spite of her father's fondness. But when they came in sight of the hut again, she said, as if it had just occurred to her:
"Papa, there are some names cut in the door; let us cut ours too."
"But child, you are so cold and pale—"
"Never mind; let us cut our names; I want to," she urged, like a spoilt child.
"No, Eva—what nonsense!"
"Oh, but I do want to," she repeated coaxingly, but the old man would not give in, grumbling still; Frank, however, pulled out his pocket-knife.
"Oh, Mr. Westhove, do cut my name; nothing but Eva—only three letters. Will you?" she asked softly.
Frank had it on his lips to say that he would like to cut his own name with hers, although it was so long, but he was silent; it would have sounded flat and commonplace in the midst of this mournful scenery. So he carved the letters on the door, which was like a traveller's album. Eva stood gazing out to the west, and she saw the three streaks of gold turn pale, and the rose-tint fade away.
"The sun, the sun!" she murmured, with a shudder, and a faint smile on her white lips and in her tearful eyes.
A few heavy drops of rain had begun to fall. Sir Archibald asked if they were ever coming, and led the way. Eva nodded with a smile, and went up to Frank:
"Have you done it, Mr. Westhove?"
"Yes," said Frank, hastily finishing the last letter.
She looked up, and saw that he had cut, "Eva Rhodes," and in very neat, even letters, smoothly finished. Below he had roughly cut, "Frank," in a great hurry.
"Why did you add 'Rhodes'?" she asked, and her voice was faint, as if far away.
"Because it took longer," Frank replied simply.
IV.
They got back to the Grand Hotel in a torrent of rain, a deluge poured out of all the urns of heaven; muddy to their waists, wet to the skin, and chilled to the bone. Eva, after a hot supper, was sent off to bed by her father, and the three men—Sir Archibald, Frank, and Bertie—sat in the drawing-room, where a few other visitors, all very cross at the bad weather, tried to solace themselves with illustrated papers or albums. The old gentleman took a doze in an easy-chair. Frank gazed pensively at the straight streaks of rain, which fell like an endless curtain of close steel needles, thrashing the surface of the fjord. Bertie sipped a hot grog, and looked at his shiny slippers.
"And did you not miss my company on your excursion?" he asked, addressing Frank with a smile, just to break the silence that reigned in the room.
Westhove turned to him in some surprise, as if roused from a dream; then, with a frank laugh, he briefly answered:
"No."
Bertie stared at him, but his friend had already turned away, lost in thought over the patter of the rain; so Bertie at last took up his book again, and tried to read. But the letters danced before his eyes; his ears and nerves still thrilled uncomfortably under the remembrance of that one short, astounding word which Frank had fired into the silence like a leaden bullet. It annoyed him that Frank should take no further notice of him.
Frank stood unmoved, looking out at the mountains, scarcely visible through the watery shroud; what he saw was their walk back from Moldehoï; the meandering downward path through the tall, dripping braken; the pelting rain streaming in their faces as from a watering-pot; Eva, closely wrapped in her wet mackintosh, and clinging to his arm as if seeking his protection; behind them her father, carefully feeling the slippery, moss-grown stones with his walking-stick. Frank had wanted to wrap her in his own thick waterproof coat, but this she had positively rejected; she would not have him made ill for her sake, she said, in that far-away voice. And then, when they were at home again, after they had changed their clothes and dined, and laughed over their adventure, Sir Archibald was afraid lest Eva should have taken cold.
Frank remembered at this moment a fragment of their conversation; his asking her, a little surprised in spite of himself, "Have you read Ibsen's 'Ghosts'? You spoke of Oswald when we were up on Moldehoï."
As it happened, he had himself read "Ghosts", and he did not think it a book for a young girl; she noticed his surprise, and had blushed deeply as she replied:
"Yes, I have read it. I read a great deal, and papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines. Do you think that I ought not to have read 'Ghosts'?"
She herself had seen no harm it, had not perhaps fully understood it, as she candidly confessed. He had not ventured to tell her that the study of such a drama of physiological heredity was, to say the least, unnecessary for a young girl; he had answered vaguely, and she had coloured yet more deeply, and said no more.
"She must have regarded me as a prig of a schoolmaster!" thought he, ill at ease. "Why should she not read what she likes? She does not need my permission for her reading; she is grown up enough. She must have thought me a pedantic owl."
"Frank!" said Bertie again.
"What?" said Frank, startled.
"We leave this place to-morrow morning, I suppose?"
"Yes, that was our plan. At least if the weather improves."
"What is the name of the next outlandish spot we are going to?"
"Veblungsnaes; and from thence to Romsdal and Gudbrandsdal."
"And the Rhodes?"
"They are going to Bergen."
"To-morrow?"
"I don't know."
And he stood once more lost in thought; the grey, wet atmosphere without cast a gloom on the scene within; and in his soul, too, reigned the deepest gloom. What was the use of fostering warm feelings when a few days of sympathetic companionship could only end in parting? This was always the case with friendly travelling-acquaintance, and was it not so throughout life, with every one—everything—we love? Was it worth while to care for anything? Was not all love a great delusion, by which men blinded themselves to their disgust at life?