CHAPTER X.

FJAERHOLM.

At the upper end of the fjord of the same name lies the small village of Fjaerholm. A white wooden church of conventional architecture is the most prominent, and at the same time the most unsightly, feature in the landscape. Around this edifice are clustered a few wooden houses, mostly painted white or yellow with a sparing brush, because paint is heavy freight, and can be bought only in Bergen or Christiania. Houses and church alike are roofed with red tiles of a bright and cleanly hue, which will be preserved much longer than the memory of the tiler. There is no smoke in Fjaerholm, and a long cold winter kills any moss-like growth, so everything looks clean and new.

Across the fjord, which is white and milky from the glaciers, is one farm, or what is by courtesy called a farm--a mere matter of ten acres or so divided into patches of potato, hay and wheat. Fjaerholm, like most Norwegian villages, hamlets, and homesteads, suggests a question. One cannot help wondering why it ever came there. The tillable soil is of sufficient area to nourish a single family, but no more, and yet a whole village manages to wrest a frugal sustenance from it. There is a post-office, and a postmaster who wears the inevitable spectacles and brown linen jacket; and he again suggests a question. With one mail a week, in and out on the same day--namely, Friday--what employment can he find during the other six? Yet he is as grave and busy as a young bank clerk in the presence of his manager. He is constantly walking backwards and forwards across the single unpaved street from his home to his office, from his office to his home, with two pieces of official paper held between his finger and thumb, his pen in his mouth, his elbow officially squared, and his linen jacket fluttering, all with an air of intense preoccupation. Poor postmaster! It is mean to fire off cheap sarcastic fireworks from a safe distance. There are others among us who wear a preoccupied air over nothing, and flourish our flimsy official papers with intense self-satisfaction.

Theo Trist found him to be the only intelligent man in the village (with the exception, perhaps, of an absorbed artist whose personal apparel spoke lamentably clear language upon the monetary prospects of Scandinavian art), and official dignity was tempered by a kindly, simple heart full of sympathy for the wandering sailor whose last resting-place was to be beneath the shadow of the ugly white church. The old minister, whose bleached and wrinkled face bore a faint and indefinite resemblance to his own sacerdotal ruff, simply obeyed Trist and the postmaster in every detail.

The arrival of the _Hermione_ was a matter of no small wonder in this mountain fastness, but in a few minutes the story was known throughout the village, for the very good reason that every inhabitant possessing means of locomotion was on the small wooden pier to meet Trist and Captain Barrow when they landed. Norway is a taciturn country, and the matter was soon talked over in a mumbling, half-plaintive way.

At mid-day there was a simple funeral. Four bare-headed sailors bore their late chief from the pier to the scantily-tenanted churchyard. The British ensign fluttered for the first time in the cold breeze that steals down from the glacier into the Fjaerholm Valley, and the old white-haired minister, clad in his quaint Lutheran robes, read unintelligible phrases over the coffin. Then the stony earth fell heavily, for it was still damp, and Theo Trist turned in his philosophically calm way and smothered a sigh of relief.

There was something to be written in a book in the vestry of the church, a few homeopathic fees to be paid, an exchange of names and addresses to be effected with the preoccupied postmaster, and Admiral Wylie was left to his rest amidst the simple Northerners. To-day, as on that day years ago, the little village stands by the side of the silent milky fjord with its white church, yellow houses, and clean red tiles. The tide steals up as of yore to the very wall of the churchyard, but in God's garden there are more seeds sown to grow in peace and holiness till the great spring-tide calls them to flower. At the head of every short valley round the Fjaerholm fjord there is still the blue wonder of the glacier which extends in one vast field of unexplored snow and ice over the broken tableland. From its edge the same stream trickles down in white confusion, gaining strength and volume in its progress, until it runs past the church and beneath the narrow wooden bridge, a veritable river. So, even in his sleep, the old salmon-fisherman may hear perchance the sweet murmurous voice of running water, the gurgle of the rapid, and the plash of the fall.

The old minister is dead. Many years ago he joined the silent ones of Fjaerholm. The postmaster also has been removed to another sphere, where, we are told, there are no wrinkled brows, no official papers, no sealing-wax and weekly mail-bags. But many there are who remember and speak still in a wondering way of the beautiful English vessel which came and went within twelve short hours--the only yacht whose anchor has stirred up the mud of the fjord. And among the wooden crosses, amidst the unlabelled mounds, there stands to-day a simple marble cross with strange English writing on it.

Soon the story will be forgotten; and perhaps in future years, not so very far distant, after all, some member of the great wandering British army, some taciturn mountaineer, or rough-clad fisherman, will ask in vain how a sea-faring countryman came to be buried here.

There is a picture in a Frenchman's study in Paris--a small untidy apartment reeking of cigarette-smoke, littered with manuscript and proof-sheet, for the owner is a giant among journalists. It is a rough water-colour drawing of a peculiar school, semi-Parisian, semi-Scandinavian, and full of a bright hard vigour. There is a wonderful strength, a subtle dramatic force, in this rough picture, which draws one to study it more closely. The scene is evidently Scandinavian, but among the figures there are unmistakable Englishmen--notably one who, standing bareheaded in the foreground, seems to look into one's face with meek, scrutinizing eyes.

'What is this picture? who is that man?' Again and again the journalist has looked up from his table, and laid aside his discoloured, odorous cigarette-end to answer such questions.

'Ah,' he replies with quick gesture, 'I know not. But it seems that it must be a funeral--the funeral of some Englishman in Norway. I bought the picture at an exhibition of Scandinavian art, at Copenhagen; and I bought it on account of the man standing in the middle--he with the brow of an angel and the mouth of Napoleon.'

'Who is he?'

'I think it must be a man I once knew. A wonderful fellow. The Philosopher, they called him in Plevna.'

The _Hermione_ moved gracefully away while the postmaster stood hat-in-hand gravely saluting. A little further back a lean ill-clad figure leant against a post sketching. This was the impecunious artist who had hovered watchfully in the background since Trist and Captain Barrow first landed. There was a fair breeze, and all that day the _Hermione_ crept down the narrow fjord and into broader waters. Among the low brown mountain-tops white clouds hung heavily, but there was blue sky overhead, and the sun shone gaily at intervals. The _Hermione_ was the quickest craft in those waters, so Trist determined to stay on board as long as the breeze held good. Mrs. Wylie never appeared on deck, and Brenda reported no change. The cheerful little lady seemed to have lost heart altogether, but Brenda kept her fears to herself as only women can. At lunch she attempted a little cheerfulness, and Trist promptly assisted her, but cheerfulness _à deux_, when it is forced, cannot be long-lived. The solemn steward moved round them with his grave face set at zero, and the meal was soon despatched. It was already known on board that the _Hermione_ was bound for home, and that Mr. Trist was going on by steamer--called away most inopportunely to an Eastern war.

It needed a cleverer woman than Brenda Gilholme to wear a smiling face amidst these solemn surroundings. The very elements were grave and foreboding, for there is no more melancholy scenery on earth than a narrow Norwegian fjord. It has all the grim, patient silence of the Arctic world without the Polar splendour of light and shade and colour; unrelieved by Arctic life. Lifeless, treeless hills, which rise sheer from the dead water without snow or herbage; a dull sea, often glassy, never rippling into green and silver shades like open ocean, and betraying no sign of life within its bosom.

While all goes well, the utter hopelessness is not noticed; but as soon as illness, or an anxiety, or, worst of all, dread death should come, the great solitude strikes one with a chill. All human aid, human science, human comfort, is so far and so obviously unattainable. To this Brenda was about to be left, with feelings naturally shaken by the Admiral's sudden and lonely death, for she did not possess a tittle of Theo Trist's superb nerve--a woman practically alone with men, kind enough, and very willing, but of a different grade, thinking different thoughts, and endowed with other feelings. Added to this, she was about to take upon her shoulders the sole responsibility of a lady usually cheery and independent, now apathetic, helpless and incomprehensible.

All this Theo Trist must have recognised as he paced by Brenda's side when the evening shadows crept down into the deeper valleys. The sun was hidden by a high range of hills to the north-west, and everything on the northern shore of the fjord was softly wrapt in a shimmering blue haze. The sea was very dark and lonesome, scarce rippled by the dying wind. Heavy gray clouds were catching on the mountain-tops all round, and seemed to cling sullenly to the land, creeping lower with the shadows. It could not be that Trist was ignorant of the girl's position. It was not thoughtlessness, because whatever this man's faults may have been, no one could, or ever did, accuse him of want of consideration for the feelings of others. But for some reason he never uttered one word of sympathy to Brenda. Already some vague shadow of war seemed to have fallen over his softer manner. He had learnt to respect the call of duty at the best school; in this respect he was a true soldier, with all a soldier's blind uncomplaining obedience to orders.

Years afterwards, when Brenda recalled the memory of that evening (and every detail of it was as clear as day), there came to her an indefinite understanding. In her own heart she had knowledge then of his motive, and she wondered a little over it. Few men, reflected she, would have divined that sympathy was the only thing she could not have borne just then. That it was not thoughtlessness she knew at the time, although she moved and lived and acted in a mechanical, unthinking way, without pausing to seek motives or assign reasons. There was sufficient evidence of Trist's forethought at every turn, and silent testimony to his powers of organization. Captain Barrow was a good sailor and an honest man--an ideal sailing-master for Admiral Wylie's yacht--but beyond that the old man's capabilities were limited. The clearest brain and brightest male intellect on board lived behind the steward's grave eyes, and to these two men Trist gave, in his gentle way, such instructions as he thought they needed.

During the voyage home Brenda was, so to speak, always running against Theo Trist. In her intercourse with Captain Barrow or the steward, she invariably found herself in some degree forestalled by the man who was already many miles away. 'Yes, miss, Mr. Trist said we was to do that if...' etc., etc., or, 'Ay, Miss Brenda, Mr. Trist thought the same.' Such remarks were the common reception offered to her most brilliant strokes of management, and, strange to say, she did not appear to resent this preconceived interference. This was the first vessel she had commanded, and there was a certain sense of comfort in meeting, as it were, with this opinion which coincided with her own. In a sense the responsibility was still shared, and if the result seemed to insinuate that another course might in some cases have been wiser, there was always the satisfaction of looking back and laying a share of the blame upon that silent acquiescence. This was something of the same spirit (an intensely human one it is) that prompts the cook to refer triumphantly to the work of Mrs. Beeton when the pudding turns out a failure.

But Trist did not consider it necessary to tell her of his arrangements made for her future benefit. Such reference would naturally have led to the question of his approaching departure for the seat of war, and this question was untasteful to him just then.

'And now, Brenda,' he said about eleven o'clock that evening, when the _Hermione_ was creeping onward between the dismal ranges of bare hill and rock that border the Sognfjord--'and now, Brenda, go to bed. You have had a hard time of it since Wednesday. We cannot reach Gudvangen before two o'clock to-morrow morning, and it is mere folly for you to stay up any longer. Say ... good-bye ... and go to bed!'

In the gray twilight her sweet face changed suddenly. Her cheeks lost all colour, and a peculiar ashen-gray hue fell upon her motionless features, while into her eyes there came such a look of horror that Trist, seeing it, was struck dumb. In a peculiar mechanical way they continued to walk side by side. She seemed to experience some difficulty in breathing, for the muscles of her round white throat moved hurriedly at short intervals. He stared straight in front of him with a dull, vacant expression in his eyes, while his stern mouth was twisted slightly to one side.

At last, just as they were turning amidships to walk aft, she spoke without raising her eyes, and her articulation was slightly muffled.

'I would rather stay on deck, but ... do you _want_ me to go?'

'No.--Stay!'

After a short silence she spoke again, in quite a different tone.

'I suppose,' she said, 'that you can form no idea yet of what you are going to--how long it will last, and who will be victorious.'

'Turkey,' he replied guardedly, 'will probably win. I do not imagine that there will be much for me to do. It all depends upon how soon Turkey gets to work. What is wanting in strategical skill will be made up in bloodthirstiness, I should imagine.'

She shuddered, but made no reply.

'I may be back in a fortnight,' he added coolly, 'and if Russia gets dragged into it, I may not get home for a year or two.'

'At all events, it will be a horrible war.'

'Probably.'

She laughed in a short, sarcastic way.

'You have already assumed the first coat of your mental and moral war-paint.'

'It is my trade, Brenda.'

'Then do not let us talk shop,' she said sharply. At times this learned little person was intensely womanly. As soon as the words were spoken she seemed to repent of them, for she added in a softer tone, 'Though I am afraid I began it.'

He looked down at her with meek, questioning eyes.

'Yes,' he said softly; 'you began it.'

'I had a reason for doing so.'

'I know you had.'

This remark made her laugh in a slightly embarrassed way.

'I wanted,' she then explained, 'to request you to take care of yourself--Theo.'

'I always do that,' he answered with some gravity; 'I am not the sort of person to expose myself to unnecessary danger.'

'I am not quite sure of that,' she said in her searching way. 'But, still, I should like to be able to tell Mrs. Wylie--later--that you promised to be careful. You see, her nerves will perhaps be a little shaken; she may be anxious.'

'I hope not,' he replied. 'It would never do for anyone to be anxious about me. It is a thing I have always tried to avoid, and Mrs. Wylie says that she never troubles about me. It would spoil my nerve, Brenda ... if I thought that there was somebody at home watching and waiting for news.'

She laughed suddenly in an almost defiant way, and the sound of her laughter was discordant in the silence only broken by a whispering breeze.

'And you would be nothing without nerve.'

'No,' he answered stupidly; 'I should be nothing without nerve.'

'Although you never expose yourself to unnecessary danger?...'

She turned suddenly and left him. There was a boat slung high up on the davits, and, passing round it, she went and stood beside the rail with her hands resting on it. The boat hid her from the eyes of anyone on deck.

Trist walked aft, and stood for a moment beside the steersman in an indifferent attitude, with his hands in his pockets, looking aloft.

'I am afraid the wind is dropping,' he said.

'Yessir--it's slackening a bit,' replied the man.

Then Trist slowly followed Brenda.

For a moment or two he stood behind her, and there seemed to be a dull tension in the very atmosphere. Then at last he spoke, in his soft, emotionless way.

'The wind is dropping,' he said; 'and we cannot expect it to rise again before the sun comes up. Let us be practical and have some rest. Go to your stateroom and try to sleep. I will lie down for a couple of hours in the saloon.'

She did not answer at once. Then she turned and passed round the boat in the other direction, so that he did not see her face. Moving towards the companion, she answered him quietly.

'Yes--it will be better.'

No other word passed between them. She went below, and presently Trist followed her. He lay down on the cabin sofa, but did not sleep. He took up a novel instead, and read assiduously.