Читать книгу A Hardy Norseman - Lyall Edna - Страница 11

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When Frithiof found that instead of addressing a stranger at Hyde Park Corner, he had actually spoken to Roy Boniface, his first feeling had been of mere blank astonishment. Then he vehemently wished himself alone once more, and cursed the fate which had first brought him into contact with the little child by the Serpentine, and which had now actually thrown him into the arms of a being who would talk and expect to be talked to. Yet this feeling also passed; for as he looked down the unfamiliar roads, and felt once more the desolateness of a foreigner in a strange country, he was obliged to own that it was pleasant to him to hear Roy’s well-known voice, and to feel that there was in London a being who took some sort of interest in his affairs.

“I wish I had seen you a minute or two sooner; my mother and my sister were in that carriage,” said Roy, “and they would have liked to meet you. You must come and see us some day, or are you quite too busy to spare time for such an out-of-the-way place as Brixton?”

“Thank you. My plans are very uncertain,” said Frithiof. “I shall probably only be over here for a few days.”

“Have you come across the Morgans?” asked Roy, “or any of our other companions at Balholm?”

In his heart he felt sure that the young Norwegian’s visit was connected with Blanche Morgan, for their mutual liking had been common property at Balholm, and even the semiengagement was shrewdly guessed at by many of the other tourists.

Frithiof knew this, and the question was like a sword-thrust to him. Had it not been so nearly dark Roy could hardly have failed to notice his change of color and expression. But he had great self-control, and his voice was quite steady, though a little cold and monotonous in tone, as he replied:

“I have just been to call on the Morgans, and have only just learned that their business relations with our firm are at an end. The connection is of so many years’ standing that I am afraid it will be a great blow to my father.”

Roy began to see daylight, and perceived, what had first escaped his notice, that some great change had passed over his companion since they parted on the Sogne Fjord; very possibly the business relations might affect his hopes, and make the engagement no longer possible.

“That was bad news to greet you,” he said with an uneasy consciousness that it was very difficult to know what to say. “Herr Falck would feel a change of that sort keenly, I should think. What induced them to make it?”

“Self-interest,” said Frithiof, still in the same tone. “No doubt they came to spy out the land in the summer. As the head of the firm remarked to me just now, it is impossible to sentimentalize over old connections—business is business, and of course they are bound to look out for themselves—what happens to us is, naturally, no affair of theirs.”

Roy would not have thought much of the sarcasm of this speech if it had been spoken by any one else, but from the lips of such a fellow as Frithiof Falck, it startled him.

They were walking along Piccadilly, each of them turning over in his mind how he could best get away from the other, yet with an uneasy feeling that they were in some way linked together by that summer holiday, and that if they parted now they would speedily regret it. Roy, with the increasing consciousness of his companion’s trouble only grew more perplexed and ill at ease. He tried to picture to himself the workings of the Norwegian’s mind, and as they walked on in silence some faint idea of the effect of the surroundings upon the new-comer began to dawn upon him. What a contrast was all this to quiet Norway! The brightly lighted shops, the busy streets, the hurry and bustle, the ever-changing crowd of strange faces.

“Do you know many people in London?” he asked, willing to shift his responsibility if possible.

“No,” said Frithiof, “I do not know a soul.”

He relapsed into silence. Roy’s thoughts went back to his first day at Bergen; he seemed to live it all through once more; he remembered how Frithiof Falck had got the Linnæa for them, how he had taken them for shelter to his father’s house; the simplicity and the happiness of the scene came back to him vividly, and he glanced at his companion as though to verify his past impressions. The light from a street lamp fell on Frithiof at that moment, and Roy started; the Norwegian had perhaps forgotten that he was not alone, at any rate he wore an expression which had not hitherto been visible. There was something about his pale, set face which alarmed Roy, and scattered to the winds all his selfishness and awkward shyness.

“Then you will of course dine with me,” he said, “since you have no other engagement.”

And Frithiof, still wishing to be alone, and yet still dreading it, thanked him and accepted the invitation.

The ice once broken, they got on rather better, and as they dined together Roy carefully abstained from talking of the days at Balholm, but asked after Sigrid and Swanhild and Herr Falck, talked of the winter in Norway, of skating, of Norwegian politics, of everything he could think of which could divert his friend’s mind from the Morgans.

“What next,” he said, as they found themselves once more in the street. “Since you go back soon we ought to make the most of the time. Shall we come to the Savoy? You must certainly hear a Gilbert and Sullivan opera before you leave.”

“I am not in the mood for it to-night,” said Frithiof. “And it has just struck me that possibly my father may telegraph instructions to me—he would have got Morgan’s telegram this morning. I will go back to the Arundel and see.”

This idea seemed to rouse him. He became much more like himself, and as they walked down the Strand the conversation dragged much less. For the first time he spoke of the work that awaited him on his return to Bergen, and Roy began to think that his scheme for diverting him from his troubles had been on the whole a success.

“We must arrange what day you will come down to us at Brixton,” he said, as they turned down Arundel Street. “Would to-morrow suit you?”

“As far as I know, it would,” said Frithiof; “but if you will just come into the hotel with me we will find out if there is any message from my father. If there is nothing, why, I am perfectly free. It is possible, though, that he will have business for me to see to.”

Accordingly they went into the hotel together, and Frithiof accosted a waiter in the entrance hall.

“Anything come for me since I went out?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, I believe there is, sir. Herr Falck, is it not?”

He brought forward a telegram and handed it to Frithiof, who hurriedly tore open the orange envelope and began eagerly to read. As he read, every shade of color left his face; the telegram was in Norwegian, and its terse, matter of-fact statement overwhelmed him. Like one in some dreadful dream he read the words:

“Father bankrupt, owing to failure Iceland expedition, also loss Morgan’s agency.”

There was more beyond, but this so staggered him that he looked up from the fatal pink paper with a sort of wild hope that his surroundings would reassure him, that he should find it all a mistake. He met the curious eyes of the waiter, he saw two girls in evening-dress crossing the vestibule.

“We ought to be at the Lyceum by this time!” he heard one of them say to the other. “How annoying of father to be so late!”

The girl addressed had a sweet sunshiny face.

“Oh, he will soon be here,” she said, smiling, but as her eyes happened to fall on Frithiof she grew suddenly grave and compassionate; she seemed to glance from his face to the telegram in his hand, and her look brought him a horrible perception that after all this was real waking existence. It was a real telegram he held, it was all true, hideously true. His father was bankrupt.

Shame, misery, bitter indignation with the Morgans, a sickening perception that if Blanche had been true to him the worst might have been averted, all this seethed in his mind. With a desperate effort he steadied his hand and again bent his eye on the pink paper and the large round-hand scrawl. Oh, yes, there was no mistake, he read the fatal words again:

“Father bankrupt, owing to failure Iceland expedition, also loss Morgan’s agency.”

By this time he had partly recovered, was sufficiently himself again to feel some sort of anxiety to read the rest of the message. Possibly there was something he might do to help his father. He read on and took in the next sentence almost at a glance.

“Shock caused cerebral hemorrhage. He died this afternoon.”

Frithiof felt a choking sensation in his throat; if he could not get out into the open air he felt that he should die, and by an instinct he turned toward the door, made a step or two forward, then staggered and caught at Roy Boniface to save himself from falling.

Roy held him up and looked at him anxiously. “You have had bad news?” he asked.

Frithiof tried to speak, but no words would come; he gasped for breath, felt his limbs failing, saw a wavy, confused picture of the vestibule, the waiter, the two girls, an elderly gentleman joining them, then felt himself guided down on to the floor, never quite losing consciousness, yet helpless either to speak or move and with a most confused sense of what had passed.

“It is in Norwegian,” he heard Roy say. “Bad news from his home, I am afraid.”

“Poor fellow!” said another voice. “Open the door some one. It’s air he wants.”

“I saw there was something wrong, father,” this was in a girl’s voice. “He looked quite dazed with trouble as he read.”

“You’ll be late for the Lyceum,” thought Frithiof, and making an effort to get up, he sunk for a moment into deeper depths of faintness; the voices died away into indistinctness, then came a consciousness of hands at his shoulders and his feet; he was lifted up and carried away somewhere.

Struggling back to life again in a few moments, he found that he was lying on a bed, the window was wide open, and a single candle flickered wildly in the draught. Roy Boniface was standing by him holding a glass of water to his lips. With an effort he drank.

“You are better, sir?” asked the waiter. “Anything I can do for you, sir? Any answer to the telegram?”

“The telegram! What do you mean?” exclaimed Frithiof. Then as full recollection came back to him, he turned his face from the light with a groan.

“The gentleman had, perhaps, better see a doctor,” suggested the waiter to Roy. But Frithiof turned upon him sharply.

“I am better. You can go away. All I want is to be alone.”

The man retired, but Roy still lingered. He could not make up his mind to leave any one in such a plight, so he crossed the room and stood by the open window looking out gravely at the dark river with its double row of lights and their long shining reflections. Presently a sound in the room made him turn. Frithiof had dragged himself up to his feet, with an impatient gesture he blew out the flickering candle, then walked with unsteady steps to the window and dropped into a chair.

“So you are here still?” he said, with something of relief in his tone.

“I couldn’t bear to leave till you were all right again,” said Roy. “Wont you tell me what is the matter, Falck?”

“My father is dead,” said Frithiof, in an unnaturally calm voice.

“Dead!” exclaimed Roy, and his tone had in it much more of awe and regret. He could hardly believe that the genial, kindly Norwegian who had climbed Munkeggen with them only a few weeks before was actually no longer in the world.

“He is dead,” repeated Frithiof quietly.

“But how was it?” asked Roy. “It must have been so sudden. You left him well only three days ago. How was it?”

“His Iceland expedition had failed,” said Frithiof; “that meant a fatal blow to his business; then, this morning, there came to him Morgan’s telegram about the agency. It was that that killed him.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Roy, with indignation in his voice.

“Leave out the adjective,” said Frithiof bitterly. “If there’s a God at all He is hard and merciless. Business is business, you see—one can’t sentimentalize over old connections. God allows men like Morgan to succeed, they always do succeed, and He lets men like my father be dragged down into shame and dishonor and ruin.”

Roy was silent; he had no glib, conventional sentences ready to hand. In his own mind he frankly admitted that the problem was beyond him. He knew quite well that far too often in business life it was the pushing, unscrupulous, selfish man who made his fortune, and the man of Herr Falck’s type, sensitive, conscientious, altogether honorable, who had to content himself with small means, or who, goaded at last to rashness, staked all on a desperate last throw and failed. It was a problem that perplexed him every day of his life, the old, old problem which Job dashed his heart against, and for which only Job’s answer will suffice. Vaguely he felt that there must be some other standard of success than that of the world; he believed that it was but the first act of the drama which we could at present see; but he honestly owned that the first act was often perplexing enough.

Nevertheless, it was his very silence which attracted Frithiof; had he spoken, had he argued, had he put forth the usual platitudes, the two would have been forever separated. But he just leaned against the window-frame, looking out at the dark river, musing over the story he had just heard, and wondering what the meaning of it could be. The “Why?” which had been the last broken ejaculation of the dead man echoed in the hearts of these two who had been brought together so strangely. Into Roy’s mind there came the line, “ ’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise.” But he had a strong feeling that in Frithiof’s case sorrow would harden and imbitter; indeed, it seemed to him already that his companion’s whole nature was changed. It was almost difficult to believe that he was the same high-spirited boy who had been the life of the party at Balholm, who had done the honors of the villa in Kalvedalen so pleasantly. And then as he contrasted that bright, homely room at Bergen with this dark, forlorn hotel room in London, a feeling that he must get his companion away into some less dreary atmosphere took possession of him.

“Don’t stay all alone in this place,” he said abruptly. “Come home with me to-night.”

“You are very good,” said Frithiof, “but I don’t think I can do that. I am better alone, and indeed must make up my mind to-night as to the future.”

“You will go back to Norway, I suppose?” asked Roy.

“Yes, I suppose so; as soon as possible. To-morrow I must see if there is any possibility of getting back in fair time. Unluckily, it is too late for the Wilson Line steamer, which must be starting at this minute from Hull.”

“I will come in to-morrow, then, and see what you have decided on,” said Roy. “Is there nothing I can do for you now?”

“Nothing, thank you,” said Frithiof. And Roy, feeling that he could be of no more use, and that his presence was perhaps a strain on his friend, wished him good-night and went out.

The next day he was detained by business and could not manage to call at the Arundel till late in the afternoon. Noticing the same waiter in the hall who had been present on the previous evening, he inquired if Frithiof were in.

“Herr Falck has gone, sir,” said the man; “he went off about an hour ago.”

“Gone!” exclaimed Roy, in some surprise. “Did he leave any message?”

“No, sir; none at all. He was looking very ill when he came down this morning, but went out as soon as he had had breakfast, and didn’t come back till four o’clock. Then he called for his bill and ordered his portmanteau to be brought down and put on a hansom, and as he passed out he gave me a trifle, and said he had spoken a bit sharp to me last night, he was afraid, and thanked me for what I had done for him. And so he drove off, sir.”

“You didn’t hear where he was going to?”

“No, sir; I can’t say as I did. The cab, if I remember right, turned along the Embankment, toward Charing Cross.”

“Thank you,” said Roy. “Very possibly he may have gone back to Norway by the Continent.”

And with a feeling of vague disappointment he turned away.