Frithiof felt as if a knife had been suddenly plunged into him; he tried to hear more, but the words died away, he could only follow the monotonous little tune in the clear voice, and the rattling of the toy cart on the pathway. And so the child passed on out of sight, and he saw her no more.
He was alone again, and the twilight for which he had longed was fast closing in upon him; a sort of blue haze seemed gathering over the park; night was coming on. What was this horrible new struggle which was beginning within him? “Evil,” “sin”; could he not at least do what he would with his own life? Where was the harm in ending that which was hopelessly spoiled and ruined? Was not suicide a perfectly legitimate ending to a life?
A voice within him answered his question plainly:
“To the man with a diseased brain—the man who doesn’t know what he is about—it is no worse an end than to die in bed of a fever. But to you—you who are afraid of the suffering of life, you who know quite well what you are doing—to you it is sin.”
Fight against it as he would, he could not stifle this new consciousness which had arisen within him. What had led him, he angrily wondered, to choose that particular place to wait in? What had made that child walk past? What had induced her to sing those particular words? Did that vague First Cause, in whom after a fashion he believed, take any heed of trifles such as those? He would never believe that. Only women or children could hold such a creed: only those who led sheltered, innocent, ignorant lives. But a man—a man who had just learned what the world really was, who saw that the weakest went to the wall, and might triumphed over right—a man who had once believed in the beauty of life and had been bitterly disillusioned—could never believe in a God who ordered all things for good. It was a chance, a mere unlucky chance, yet the child’s words had made it impossible for him to die in peace.
As a matter of fact the sunset sky and fading light had suggested to the little one’s untroubled mind the familiar evening hymn with its graphic description of scenery, its beautiful word-painting, its wide human sympathies; and that great mystery of life which links us together, whether we know it or not, gave to the child the power to counteract the influence of Blanche Morgan’s faithlessness, and to appeal to one to whom the sight of that same sunset had suggested only thoughts of despair.
A wild confusion of memories seemed to rush through his mind, and blended with them always were the welcome words and the quiet little chant. He was back at home again talking with the old pastor who had prepared him for confirmation; he was a mere boy once more, unhesitatingly accepting all that he was taught; he was standing in the great crowded Bergen church and declaring his belief in Christ, and his entire willingness to give up everything wrong; he was climbing a mountain with Blanche and arguing with her that life—mere existence—was beautiful and desirable.
Looking back afterward on the frightful struggle, it seemed to him that for ages he had tossed to and fro in that horrible hesitation. In reality all must have been over within a quarter of an hour. There rose before him the recollection of his father as he had last seen him standing on the deck of the steamer, and he remembered the tone of his voice as he had said:
“I look to you, Frithiof, to carry out the aims in which I myself have failed, to live the life that I could wish to have lived.”
He saw once again the wistful look in his father’s eyes, the mingled love, pride, and anxiety with which he had turned to him, loath to let him go, and yet eager to speed him on his way. Should he now disappoint all his hopes? Should he, deliberately and in the full possession of all his faculties, take a step which must bring terrible suffering to his home people? And then he remembered for the first time that already trouble and vexation and loss had overtaken his father; he knew well how greatly he would regret the connection with the English firm, and he pictured to himself the familiar house in Kalvedalen with a new and unfamiliar cloud upon it, till instead of the longing for death there came to him a nobler longing—a longing to go back and help, a longing to make up to his father for the loss and vexation and the slight which had been put upon him. He began to feel ashamed of the other wish, he began to realize that there was still something to be lived for, though indeed life looked to him as dim and uninviting as the twilight park with its wreaths of gray mists, and its unpeopled solitude.