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. Today, 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 mailbags. 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 today 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 seafaring 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 watercolour 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 mountaintops 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,
