Frithiof followed her, and glancing toward the bed could hardly control the awed surprise which seized him as for the first time he saw a man upon whom the shadow of death had already fallen. Once or twice he had met Hallifield in the passage setting off to his work in the early morning, and he contrasted his recollection of the brisk, fair-complexioned, respectable-looking conductor, and this man propped up with pillows, his face drawn with pain, and of that ghastly ashen hue which is death’s herald.
“The Norwegian gentleman is here, and will help you into the kitchen, John,” said the wife, beginning to swathe him in blankets.
“Thank you, sir,” said the man gratefully. “It’s just a fancy I’ve got to die in there by the fire, though I doubt I’ll never get warm any more.”
Frithiof carried him in gently and set him down in a cushioned chair drawn close to the fire; he seemed pleased by the change of scene, and looked round the tidy little room with brightening eyes.
“It’s a nice little place!” he said. “I wish I could think you would keep it together, Bessie, but with the four children you’ll have a hard struggle to live.”
For the first time she broke down and hid her face in her apron. A look of keen pain passed over the face of the dying man, he clinched and unclinched his hands. But Sigrid, who was rocking the baby on the other side of the hearth, bent forward and spoke to him soothingly.
“Don’t you trouble about that part of it,” she said. “We will be her friends. Though we are poor yet there are many ways in which we can help her, and I know a lady who will never let her want.”
He thanked her with a gratitude that was pathetic.
“I’m in a burial club,” he said, after a pause, stretching out his nerveless fingers toward the fire; “she’ll have no expenses that way; they’ll bury me very handsome, which’ll be a satisfaction to her, poor girl. I’ve often thought of it when I saw a well-to-do looking funeral pass alongside the tram, but I never thought it would come as soon as this. I’m only going in thirty-five, which isn’t no great age for a man.”
“The work was too much for you,” said Frithiof.