A Hardy Norseman

by Edna Lyall

A voice close beside him made him start. They were passing a corner where two streets crossed each other, and the words that fell upon his ear, spoken with a strange fervor yet with deep reverence, were just these:

“Jesus, blessed Jesus!”

He glanced sharply round and saw a little crowd of people gathered together; the words had been read from a hymn-book by a man whose whole heart had been thrown into what he read. They broke into Frithiof’s revery very strangely. Then immediately the people began to sing the well-known hymn, “The Great Physician now is near,” and the familiar tune, which had long ago penetrated to Norway, brought to Frithiof’s mind a host of old memories. Was it after all true that the problem had been solved? Was it true that in spite of suffering and sin and misery the pledge of ultimate victory had already been given? Was it true that he whose uncongenial work seemed chiefly to consist of passive endurance had yet a share in helping to bring about the final triumph of good?

From the words read by the street preacher, his mind involuntarily turned to the words spoken to him a few days before by a stage singer. Donati had spoken of living the life of the crucified. He had said very little, but what he said had the marvelous power of all essentially true things. He had spoken not as a conventional utterer of platitudes, but as one man who has fought and agonized and overcome, many speak to another man who, bewildered by the confusion of the battle-field, begins to doubt his own cause. And far more than anything actually said there came to him the thought of Donati’s own life, what he had himself observed of it, and what he had heard of his story from Cecil. A wonderfully great admission was made lately by a celebrated agnostic writer when he said that, “The true Christian saint, though a rare phenomenon, is one of the most wonderful to be witnessed in the moral world.” Nor was the admission much qualified by the closing remark,—“So lofty, so pure, so attractive that he ravishes men’s souls into oblivion of the patent and general fact that he is an exception among thousands of millions of professing Christians.”

Frithiof’s soul was not in the least ravished into oblivion of this fact; he was as ready as before, perhaps more ready, to admit the general selfishness of mankind, certainly he was more than ever conscious of his own shortcomings, and daily found pride and selfishness and ungraciousness in his own life and character. But his love for Donati, his great admiration for him, had changed his whole view of the possibilities of human life. The Italian had doubtless been specially fortunate in his parentage, but his life had been one of unusual temptation, his extremely rapid change from great misery to the height of popularity and success had alone been a very severe trial, though perhaps it was what Frithiof had heard of his three years in the traveling opera company that appealed to him most. Donati was certainly saint and hero in one; but it was not only men of natural nobility who were called to live this life of the crucified. All men were called to it. Deep down in his heart he knew that even for him it was no impossibility. And something of Donati’s incredulous scorn as he flung back the word “impossible” in his face, returned to him now and nerved him to a fresh attack on the uncongenial life and the faulty character with which he had to work. The week passed by pretty well, and the following Sunday found him tired indeed, but less down-hearted, and better able to keep at arm’s length his old foe depression. For that foe, though chiefly due to physical causes, can, as all doctors will bear witness, to be a great extent held in check by spiritual energy.

The morning was so bright that Sigrid persuaded him to take a walk, and fully intending to return in an hour’s time to his translating, he paced along the embankment. But either the fine day, or the mere pleasure of exercise, or some sort of curiosity to see a part of London of which he had heard a great deal, lured him on. He crossed BlackFriars Bridge and walked farther and farther, following the course of the river eastward into a region, dreary indeed, yet at times picturesque, with the river gleaming in the sunshine, and on the farther bank the Tower—solid and grim, as befitted the guardian of so many secrets of the past. Even here there was a quiet Sunday feeling, while something familiar in the sight of the water and the shipping carried him back in imagination to Norway, and there came over him an intense longing for his own country. It was a feeling that often took possession of him, nor could he any more account for its sudden seizures than the Swiss can account for that sick longing for his native mountains to which he is often liable.

“It’s no use,” he thought to himself. “It will take me the best part of my life to pay off the debts, and till they are paid I can’t go.”

He turned his eyes from the river, as though by doing so he could drag his thoughts from Norway, when to his astonishment he all at once caught sight of his own national flag—the well known blue and white cross on the red ground. His breath came fast, he walked on quickly to get a nearer view of the building from which the flag floated. Hurriedly pushing open the door, he entered the place, and found himself in a church, which presented the most curious contrast to churches in general, for it was almost full of men, and the seven or eight women who were there made little impression, their voices being drowned in the hearty singing of the great bulk of the congregation.

They began to sing just as he entered; the tune was one which he had known all his life, and a host of memories came back to him as he heard once more the slow and not too melodious singing, rendered striking, however, because of the fervor of the honest Norsemen. Tears, which all his troubles had not called forth, started now to his eyes as he listened to the words which carried him right out of the foreign land back to his childhood at Bergen.