After that, prayers and hymns seemed all mixed up in a wild confusion. Now and then, between the heads of the crowd, he caught a vision of a slim, white-robed figure, and presently Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” was struck up, and he knew that she would pass down the aisle once more. Would her face be turned in his direction? Yes; for a little child scattered flowers before her, and she glanced round at it with a happy, satisfied smile. As for Frithiof, he just stood there passively, and no one watching him could have known of the fierce anguish that wrung his heart. As a matter of fact, nobody observed him at all; he was a mere unit in the crowd; and with human beings all round him, yet in absolute loneliness, he passed out of the church into the chill autumnal air, to
“Take up his burden of life again,
Saying only, ‘It might have been.’”
CHAPTER XIV.
The cemetery just outside the Stadsport at Bergen, which had called forth the eager admiration of Blanche Morgan in the previous summer, looked perhaps even lovelier now that winter had come with its soft, white shroud. The trees, instead of their green leaves, stretched out rime-laden branches against the clear, frosty sky; the crosses on the graves were fringed with icicles, which, touched here and there by the lovely rays of the setting sun, shone ruby-red, or in the shade gleamed clear as diamonds against the background of crisp white snow. Away in the distance Ulriken reared his grand old head majestically, a dark streak of precipitous rock showing out now and then through the veil which hid his summer face; and to the right, in the valley, the pretty Lungegaarsvand was one great sheet of ice, over which skaters glided merrily.
The body of Sigurd Falck rested beside that of his wife in the midst of all this loveliness, and one winter afternoon Sigrid and little Swanhild came to bring to the grave their wreaths and crosses, for it was their father’s birthday. They had walked from their uncle’s house laden with all the flowers they had been able to collect, and now stood at the gate of the cemetery, which opened stiffly, owing to the frost. Sigrid looked older and even sadder than she had done in the first shock of her father’s death, but little Swanhild had just the same fair rosy face as before, and there was a veiled excitement and eagerness in her manner as she pushed at the cemetery gate; she was able to take a sort of pleasure in bringing these birthday gifts, and even had in her heart a keen satisfaction in the certainty that “their grave” would look prettier than any of the others.
“No one else has remembered his birthday,” she said, as they entered the silent graveyard. “See, the snow is quite untrodden. Sigrid when are they going to put father’s name on the stone?” and she pointed to the slanting marble slab which leaned against the small cross. “There is only mother’s name still. Wont they put a bigger slab instead where there will be room for both?”
“Not now,” said Sigrid, her voice trembling.
“But why not, Sigrid? Every one else has names put. It seems as if we had forgotten him.”
“Oh, no, no,” said Sigrid, with a sob. “It isn’t that, darling; it is that we remember so well, and know what he would have wished about it.”