“I was tired, and you was kind to me, and these is real jammy!”
But after this fervent little speech, he said no more. He did not, as a Norwegian child would have done, shake hands as a sign of gratitude, or say in the pretty Norse way, “Tak for maden” (thanks for the meal); there had never been any one to teach him the expression of the courtesies of life, and with him they were not innate. He merely looked at his friend with shining eyes like some animal that feels but cannot speak its gratitude. Then before long the father reappeared, and the little fellow with one shy nod of the head ran off, looking back wistfully every now and then at the stranger who would be remembered by him to the very end of his life.
The next day something happened which added the last drops to Frithiof’s cup of misery, and made it overflow. The troubles of the past year, and the loneliness and poverty which he had borne, had gradually broken down his health, and there came to him now a revelation which proved the final blow. He was dining at his usual restaurant. Too tired to eat much, he had taken up a bit of one of the society papers which some one had left there, and his eye fell on one of those detestable paragraphs which pander to the very lowest tastes of the public. No actual name was given, but every one knowing anything about her could not fail to see that Blanche Romiaux was the woman referred to. The most revolting insinuations, the most contemptible gossip, ended with the words, “An interesting divorce case may soon be expected.”
Frithiof grew deathly white. He tried to believe that it was all a lie, tried to work himself up into a rage against the editor of the paper, tried to assure himself that, whatever Blanche might have been before marriage, after it she must necessarily become all that was womanly and pure. But deep down in his heart there lurked a fearful conviction that in the main this story was true. Feeling sick and giddy, he made his way along Oxford Street, noticing nothing, walking like a man in a dream. Just in front of Buzzard’s a victoria was waiting, and a remarkably good-looking man stood on the pavement talking to its occupant. Frithiof would have passed by without observing them had not a familiar voice startled him into keen consciousness. He looked up hastily and saw Lady Romiaux—not the Blanche who had won his heart in Norway, for the lips that had once been pressed to his wore a hard look of defiance, and the eyes that had insnared him had now an expression that confirmed only too well the story he had just read. He heard her give a little artificial laugh in which there was not even the ghost of merriment, and after that it seemed as if a great cloud had descended on him. He moved on mechanically, but it was chiefly by a sort of instinct that he found his way back to the shop.
“Good heavens, Mr. Falck! how ill you are looking!” exclaimed the head man as he glanced at him. “It’s a good thing Mr. Robert will be back again soon. If I’m not very much mistaken, he’ll put you into the doctor’s hands.”
“Oh, it is chiefly this hot weather,” said Frithiof, and as if anxious to put an end to the conversation, he turned away to his desk and began to write, though each word cost him a painful effort, and seemed to be dragged out of him by sheer force. At tea-time he wandered out in the street, scarcely knowing what he was doing, and haunted always by Blanche’s sadly altered face. When he returned he found that the boy who dusted the shop had spilled some ink over his order-book, whereupon he flew into one of those violent passions to which of late he had been liable, so entirely losing his self-control that those about him began to look alarmed. This recalled him to himself, and much disgusted at having made such a scene, he sunk into a state of black depression. He could not understand himself; could not make out what was wrong; could not conceive how such a trifle could have stirred him into such senseless rage. He sat, pen in hand, too sick and miserable to work, and with a wild confusion of thoughts rushing through his brain. He was driving along the Strand-gaden with Blanche, and talking gayly of the intense enjoyment of mere existence; he was rowing her on the fjord, and telling her the Frithiof Saga; he was saving her on the mountain, and listening to her words of love; he was down in the sheltered nook below the flagstaff at Balholm, and she was clinging to him in the farewell which had indeed been forever.
“I can bear it no longer,” he said to himself. “I have tried to bear this life, but it’s no use—no use.”
Yet after a while there rose within him a thought which checked the haunting visions of failure and the longing for death. He remembered the face which had so greatly struck him the day before, and again those kindly words rang in his ear, “Courage! the worst will pass.”
Who was this man? What gave him his extraordinary influence? How had he gained his insight, and sympathy, and fearless brightness? If one man had attained to all this, why not any man? Might not life still hold for him something that was worth having? There floated back to him the remembrance of the last pleasurable moment he had known—it was the sight of the child’s enjoyment of the strawberries.
At length closing-time came. He dragged himself back to Vauxhall, shut himself into his dreary little room, pulled the table toward the open window, and began to work at Herr Sivertsen’s translating. Night after night he had gone on, with the dogged courage of his old Viking ancestors, upheld by the same fierce, fighting nature which had made them the terror of the North. But at last he was at the very end of his strength. A violent shivering fit seized him. Work was no longer possible; he could only stagger to the bed, with that terrible consciousness of being utterly and hopelessly beaten, which to a man is so hard to bear.