A Hardy Norseman. Lyall Edna
be very sure I shant marry till I see a reasonable chance of being happier than I am at home with you. And when will that be, do you think?”
He stroked her golden hair tenderly.
“Not just yet, Sigrid, let us hope. Not just yet. As to our Frithiof, shall I tell you of the palace in cloud-land I am building for him?”
“Not that he should marry the pretty Miss Morgan, as Swanhild calls her?” said Sigrid, with a strange sinking at the heart.
“Why not? I hear that she is a charming girl, both clever and beautiful, and indeed it seems to me that he is quite disposed to fall in love with her at first sight. Of course were he not properly in love I should never wish him to marry, but I own that a union between the two houses would be a great pleasure to me—a great relief.”
He sighed, and for the first time the anxious look in his eyes attracted Sigrid’s notice. “Father, dear,” she exclaimed, “wont you tell me what is troubling you? There is something, I think. Tell me, little father.”
He looked startled, and a slight flush spread over his face; but when he spoke his voice was reassuring.
“A business man often has anxieties which can not be spoken of, dear child. God knows they weigh lightly enough on some men; I think I am growing old, Sigrid, and perhaps I have never learned to take things so easily as most merchants do.”
“Why, father, you were only fifty last birthday; you must not talk yet of growing old. How do other men learn, do you think, to take things lightly?”
“By refusing to listen to their own conscience,” said Herr Falck, with sudden vehemence. “By allowing themselves to hold one standard of honor in private life and a very different standard in business transactions. Oh, Sigrid! I would give a great deal to find some other opening for Frithiof. I dread the life for him.”
“Do you think it is really so hard to be strictly honorable in business life? And yet it is a life that must be lived, and is it not better that such a man as Frithiof should take it up—a man with such a high sense of honor?”
“You don’t know what business men have to stand against,” said Herr Falck. “Frithiof is a good, honest fellow, but as yet he has seen nothing of life. And I tell you, child, we often fail in our strongest point.”
He rose from his chair and paced the room; it seemed to Sigrid that a nameless shadow had fallen on their sunny home. She was for the first time in her life afraid, though the fear was vague and undefined.
“But there, little one,” said her father, turning toward her again. “You must not be worried. I get nervous and depressed, that is all. As I told you, I am growing old.”
“Frithiof would like to help you more if you would let him,” said Sigrid, rather wistfully. “He was saying so just now.”
“And so he shall in the autumn. He is a good lad, and if all goes well I hope he will some day be my right hand in the business; but I wish him to have a few months’ holiday first. And there is this one thing, Sigrid, which I can tell you, if you really want to know about my anxieties.”
“Indeed I do, little father,” she said eagerly.
“There are matters which you would not understand even could I speak of them; but you know, of course, that I am agent in Norway for the firm of Morgan Brothers. Well, a rumor has reached me that they intend to break off the connection and to send out the eldest son to set up a branch at Stavanger. It is a mere rumor and reached me quite accidentally. I very much hope it may not be true, but there is no denying that Stavanger would be in most ways better suited for their purpose; in fact, the friend who told me of the rumor said that they felt now that it had been a mistake all along to have the agency here and they had only done it because they knew Bergen and knew me.”
“Why is Stavanger a better place for it?”
“It is better because most of the salmon and lobsters are caught in the neighborhood of Stavanger, and all the mackerel too to the south of Bergen. I very much hope the rumor is not true, for it would be a great blow to me to lose the English connection. Still it is not unlikely, and the times are hard now—very hard.”
“And you think your palace in cloud-land for Frithiof would prevent Mr. Morgan from breaking the connection?”
“Yes; a marriage between the two houses would be a great thing, it would make this new idea unlikely if not altogether impossible. I am thankful that there seems now some chance of it. Let the two meet naturally and learn to know each other. I will not say a word to Frithiof, it would only do harm; but to you, Sigrid, I confess that my heart is set on this plan. If I could for one moment make you see the future as I see it, you would feel with me how important the matter is.”
At this moment Frithiof himself entered, and the conversation was abruptly ended.
“Well, have you decided?” he asked, in his eager, boyish way. “Is it to be Ulvik or Balholm? What! You were not even talking about that. Oh, I know what it was then. Sigrid was deep in the discussion of to-morrow’s dinner. I will tell you what to do, abolish the romekolle, and let us be English to the backbone. Now I think of it, Mr. Morgan is not unlike a walking sirloin with a plum-pudding head. There is your bill of fare, so waste no more time.”
The brother and sister went off together, laughing and talking; but when the door closed behind them the master of the house buried his face in his hands and for many minutes sat motionless. What troubled thoughts, what wavering anxieties filled his mind, Sigrid little guessed. It was, after all, a mere surface difficulty of which he had spoken; of the real strain which was killing him by inches he could not say a word to any mortal being, though now in his great misery he instinctively prayed.
“My poor children!” he groaned. “Oh, God spare them from this shame and ruin which haunts me. I have tried to be upright and prudent—it was only this once that I was rash. Give me success for their sakes, O God! The selfish and unscrupulous flourish on all sides. Give me this one success. Let me not blight their whole lives.”
But the next day, when he went forward to greet his English guests, it would have been difficult to recognize him as the burdened, careworn man from whose lips had been wrung that confession and that prayer. All his natural courtesy and brightness had returned to him; if he thought of his business at all he thought of it in the most sanguine way possible, and the Morgans saw in him only an older edition of Frithiof, and wondered how he had managed to preserve such buoyant spirits in the cares and uncertainties of mercantile life. The two o’clock dinner passed off well; Sigrid, who was a clever little housekeeper, had scouted Frithiof’s suggestion as to the roast beef and plum-pudding, and had carefully devised a thoroughly Norwegian repast.
“For I thought,” she explained afterwards to Blanche, when the two girls had made friends, “that if I went to England I should wish to see your home life just exactly as it really is, and so I have ordered the sort of dinner we should naturally have, and did not, as Frithiof advised, leave out the romekolle.”
“Was that the stuff like curds and whey?” asked Blanche, who was full of eager interest in everything.
“Yes: it is sour cream with bread crumbs grated over it. We always have a plateful each at dinner, it is quite one of our customs. But everything here is simple of course, not grand as with you; we do not keep a great number of servants, or dine late, or dress for the evening—here there is nothing”—she hesitated for a word, then in her pretty foreign English added, “nothing ceremonious.”
“That is just the charm of it all,” said Blanche, in her sweet gracious way. “It is all so real and simple and fresh, and I think it was delightful of you to know how much best we should like to have a glimpse of your real home life instead of a stupid party. Now mamma cares for nothing but just to make a great show, it doesn’t matter whether the visitors really like it or not.”
Sigrid felt a momentary pang of doubt; she had fallen in love with Blanche Morgan the moment she saw her, but it somehow hurt her to hear the English girl criticise her own mother. To Sigrid’s