Katharine Frensham: A Novel. Harraden Beatrice
said:
"Farvel, Clifford. You must come and see me in Copenhagen. I am not coming to you again yet. None of us get any pleasure out of the visit, and I only do harm to you all. My aura does not match with Marianne's aura. But do not let the boy forget me. Speak to him sometimes about old Knutty."
She immediately packed up and came to him when she heard of Marianne's death; but although he was overjoyed at having her near him, he told her nothing. Still, it was a comfort to know she was at "Falun;" a comfort to sit with her and try to begin to tell her something of that which was torturing his mind, even if the attempt always ended in failure.
"Ak, ak," she reflected, "he was always like that. I used to try and make a hole in the ice; and when I thought I had succeeded, lo and behold it was frozen up again! People of his temperament have a hard time under that ice. Poor dears, all of them."
He told her of course the outward circumstances of the tragedy, and he made one remark which puzzled her.
"I am so terribly afraid, Knutty," he said, "that Alan may turn against me."
"Sniksnak!" she said. "Why make trouble for yourself? Why should he turn against you? If you had murdered your poor Marianne, of course then – "
"Ah, but sometimes I think – " he began, and then broke off.
"I know what I think," said Fröken Knudsgaard, getting up and tapping him on the head with her knitting-needles. "You must go away, and at once. Shut up 'Falun,' and turn your back on the laboratory. Take a journey immediately."
"Shall I come to dear old Denmark?" he said. In the old days he had had many happy times with Knutty in Copenhagen.
"That is not far enough," she said decisively. "I should advise you to go round the world, and at once. You have plenty of money and plenty of time. Don't take a million years to make up your mind. Start tomorrow, both of you. It will do Alan good to get away. He is a dear boy, but he is going to be sensitive like you. I wish I could come too. But I am too old and fat. But you must go, Clifford. You cannot stay on here and add to your unhappiness by inventing absurd tortures for yourself. Go and see some of the Yankees' laboratories first, and then run out to Japan to see your Japanese chemist friend at Tokyo. You have always been talking about going."
"Shall I really go, Knutty?" he asked, a little wistfully.
"Ja, kjaere,"1 she answered, nodding at him. "Otherwise, you will have to go much farther; you will have to go out of your mind. What a nuisance that would be, and selfish of you too! For you would spoil the boy's life, and poor old Knutty's life. You know how she loves to smile and be happy like a true Dane. Take my advice, shut up 'Falun,' go to London, stay at a hotel for a few days, amuse yourselves, get your kit, spend a lot of money, and then take your tickets and be off to Japan. And when you come back, call in at Copenhagen and see me. We will then go down to your beloved harbour to see the ships coming in. Do you remember how interested you used to be in the egg-and-butter ships? Very well, is that settled?"
Clifford Thornton was silent. But he knew that his old Dane was right, and that he could not go on day after day struggling with his conflicting emotions without the immense help of changed circumstances. He knew that every hour he spent in his laboratory mooning over the subjects on which he could not fix his real attention, was wasted time and wasted strength.
"And as the days go by," Knutty continued boldly, "you will feel differently about everything, dear one. And then you must find some one whose aura will be entirely sympathetic with your aura. Ah, you shake your head, Clifford."
"Hush, hush, you must not say that," he said, turning away from her.
"Well, well," she said, half to herself, "perhaps I press on too quickly. But you will go away – promise me that? And shut up 'Falun' with all its sad memories?"
"In my secret heart," she thought, "I should like to blow up 'Falun' and have done with the wretched place!"
"If we go away, will you come too, Knutty?" he said eagerly. "We would take such care of you."
"Seventy years of age, and seventeen stone in weight!" she replied gaily. "No, no, kjaere, I should be too heavy a responsibility. No, I will wait for you in my own little Danish home, made so wickedly comfortable by your kindness; and every day I shall say, 'My Clifford is finding his way into the sunlight again.'"
He stooped down and kissed her kind old hand.
"If I could only tell you my inmost thoughts; but I cannot," he said sadly.
"You never could unfold yourself, dear one," she answered. "You know I always had to guess at what was going on within your mind, and always guessed wrong, of course, and therefore could not help you. I am sure there can be no mental or physical suffering so great as reluctant repression of the thoughts within us."
"Knutty," he said, after a pause, "do you believe that minds can reach each other in dreams?"
"I don't know, kjaere," she said. "I have never reached any one's mind, either in a dream or out of one. In the years gone by, I prided myself on doing so, and then found out that I was mistaken. My present belief is that no one mind can ever reach another in reality, and that each human being speaks and understands only one language – his own language – and every one else's language is what you English people call a 'damned foreign tongue.' Excuse me, dear one, my words may not be academic, but they are supposed to be philosophic. And that reminds me that, in my opinion, you have been a true philosopher, Clifford."
"How so, Knutty?" he said.
"You have asked very little of any one," she answered, "and you have made a successful fight with bitterness. That is what I call true philosophy."
He shook his head in deprecation of her praise, and after another pause he said:
"Do you think, Knutty, that one might be able to injure another person in and through a dream?"
"How should I know?" she said, looking troubled. "I am not given to reflecting on such matters, thank Heaven."
"If one could injure, one could also benefit," he said, without heeding her answer. "There would at least be that comfort – for others."
"And why not for you?" she asked.
"Alas!" he answered, "my dreams were always the other way."
But after he had said that, he returned hastily to his usual reserve, and Fröken Knudsgaard understood him too well to press him for a confidence.
"Besides, it would be waste of tissue," she said to herself. "One would have more success in pressing an alabaster effigy."
But in this way she had had one or two glimpses into his mind, and she was really anxious about his mental state, and not happy about Alan either. She kept her shrewd old eyes open, and she began to see that Alan sometimes avoided being alone with his father. He seemed a little awkward with him, as though some shadow had risen up between them. He too was reserved, and Knutty could not get him to speak of his mother's death.
"I am living with a pair of icebergs," she wrote to her botanist nephew and niece in Copenhagen, Ejnar and Gerda. "Darling icebergs both of them, but icebergs all the same. I find this Arctic expedition of mine, like all Arctic expeditions, fraught with grave difficulties. Write and encourage me, dear ones; and in case I should become a frozen plant, keep an extra warm place for me in the herbarium of your hearts."
But Alan was not reserved about other matters, and he and the old Danish lady became excellent friends together. He said repeatedly to her:
"Knutty, why haven't you been to see us more often?"
And Knutty, stroking her chin, would reply:
"The climate, dear one, the climate; either too hot or too cold; too dry or too wet – generally too wet! Anyway, the atmosphere didn't suit me; too trying."
And of course she was speaking of the mental atmosphere of "Falun."
She transformed "Falun" into an abode of comparative cheerfulness, and brightened up the house in a most astonishing manner. The boy hastened home from his riding or cycling. There was something to go back for now; and Knutty was always