Katharine Frensham: A Novel

"Oh," she thought, with a shudder, "if it had been he! – if it had been he!"

And her own words echoed back to her as an answer:

"My womanhood would be buried with my girlhood."

Then she looked up and saw a carriage in the distance, in the far distance. The boy also saw it. As it approached nearer he said:

"It is from the Solli Gaard. That is Jens driving."

Katharine's heart gave a sudden bound.

"Haste, haste!" she said excitedly to the boy; and he, moved by her eagerness, urged on the little yellow pony, which rose to the occasion and flew over the ground.

Carriage and cariole drew up at the same moment, and Katharine saw face to face the man whom she loved.

"We came to fetch you," he said.

CHAPTER XVII

Bedstefar had been dead for three days, and it had been arranged that the funeral was to take place a week after the night of his death. Preparations had been going steadily forward, interrupted only by the anxiety and excitement caused by Clifford's long absence in the mountains and his supposed death. Bedstemor herself had been much troubled about him, and had spent a good deal of time watching for him. But when he returned safely, she felt free to continue her persecutions in the kitchen; and it took a great amount of Knutty's craftiness to entice her into the porch and keep her there. Bedstemor was astonishingly well, seemed in excellent spirits, and in answer to questions as to how she felt, she always said briskly:

"Bra', bra,' meget bra'" (Well, very well).

Indeed, she was not a little gratified to be once more the central figure of circumstances, as in the old days, before she and her husband had retired to the dower-house. But, spite of her cheerfulness, she looked a pathetic old figure wandering about, relieved from constant attendance at her sick husband's bedside, and thus thrown on the little outside world for distraction and company. Tante was endlessly kind to her, but had many a secret laugh over the old widow's unfunereal attitude of mind, and over her stubborn determination to go and bully every one in the kitchen. Tante herself was in great form again. She had recovered from her fears and tears, and had, so she told Katharine, regained her usual Viking bearing.

"Never shall I forget your tenderness, dear one," she said to Katharine. "If I loved him even a hundred times more than I do, I should not grudge him to you. He loves you, and you are the right aura for him. And some day he will tell you so, although it will not be very soon, stupid fellow! He will try and try many times, and leave off suddenly. I know him well, my prisoner of silence. These reserved people! What a nuisance they are to themselves, and every one else! But to themselves – ak, ak, poor devils!"

Katharine, who was standing at the time on Knutty's bedroom-balcony, looked out into the distance. She herself had been somewhat silent since that sad morning at the Skyds-station.

"The end of it all will be, dear one," Knutty continued recklessly, "that you will have to help him. This sort of man always has to be helped, otherwise he goes on beginning and leaving off suddenly until Doomsday. I know the genus well."

Katharine went away.

"Aha," said Knutty to herself, "I have said too much. And, after all, it is premature. Oh, these parish-clocks! Why, Marianne has only been dead about a year. How like her, only to have been dead about a year! Oh, oh, what a wicked old woman I am!"

She called Katharine, and Katharine came.

"Kjaere," she said, as she stroked Katharine's hand lovingly. "I have always been a free-lance with my naughty old tongue. No one with any sense takes any notice of me. And am I not funny and human too? All this time I have only been thinking that you are the right aura for my Clifford. Not once have I asked myself whether my Clifford were the right aura for you! I should have been an ideal mother, always on the alert to snatch up all the best things for those I loved, regardless of other people's feelings and interests. Ah, that is right, you are smiling, and not angry with your Viking friend. And, dear one, that reminds me again of how you comforted me when I was not behaving like a Viking. Do you remember assuring me that his absence, and Alan's anxiety for him, were working for their complete reconciliation? Your words have come beautifully true, haven't they? Well, you have the great heart that knows."

They were a small party at the Gaard now. Ejnar had gone off to Kongsvold in the Dovre mountains, a district specially interesting to botanists as the habitat of certain plants not found elsewhere. Gerda would have gone with him, but that she had sprained her ankle. She fretted for her Ejnar, although she pretended that his absence was a great relief.

"It is grand to be free at last!" she said to Tante. "Free at last. I can now take a long breath."

"Yes," said Tante, smiling mischievously, "freedom is delightful when it does not make your nose red and your eyes moist!"

Alan had gone off with Jens to a mountain-lake to catch trout for the funeral, and would not be back for a day or two; and Clifford was away at the Skyds-station, helping the two strangers to make the necessary arrangements for taking their sad burden home to England. All the other guests except the Sorenskriver had left, and he was in a thoroughly disagreeable mood, grumbling about the food, and annoyed because there was going to be a funeral at the Gaard.

"Then why not go away?" Katharine suggested on one occasion, when his martyrdom had reached an acute stage.

"Thank you, I choose to stay," he answered in his gruffest tone of voice.

Katharine laughed. She liked the Sorenskriver even at his worst.

"Read this German newspaper, with a whole column of abuse against England," Katharine said, teasing him. "That will make you feel cheerful, Sorenskriver."

"Sniksnak!" said the Sorenskriver, a little less roughly.

"Or come out for a walk with me and help me pick multebaer," she added. "Mor Inga was saying she had not half enough as yet."

"Perhaps I will come," he answered, with a grim smile on his face. He took pleasure in Katharine's company, and was secretly delighted that Clifford was busy helping those Englishmen over at the Skyds-station. In this way he got Katharine to himself, and he sat smoking his long pipe in the porch, grumbling and disagreeable, but, in justice it must be owned, gentle to Bedstemor. Tante declared that he was courting Katharine.

"I am given to understand, dear one," she said, with a twinkle in her eye, "that the Norwegian way of courting is to be extremely disagreeable, and almost rude to the person whom you adore. In a day or two you will have a proposal – and what then?"

"Tante thinks only about marriages," Gerda said reproachfully.

"Well, what else in the world is there to think about?" Tante asked defiantly.

"Oh, Tante, you know you do not think that," Gerda said. "If you really thought that, why didn't you get married yourself?"

"Because, kjaere, no one would have me, except a sea-captain, and he was mad," Knutty answered. "And he killed his mate soon afterwards. I was always glad I was not his mate!"

"It is not true," Gerda said, turning indignantly to Katharine. "She had lots of admirers and lovers. You ask her Englishman. He knows."

"Ah," said Knutty, "perhaps I did have a few admirers in my time! You may be sure no sane woman would ever say she had never had any, unless there was some one at hand to deny her statement."

When Clifford came home that evening, Knutty herself broached the subject again.

"Kjaere," she said, "did I have a few admirers in my time, or did I not? I have forgotten. Not that a woman ever does forget, but tell me!"

"You had numbers, Knutty," Clifford answered, smiling at her; "and I was jealous of them all. At nine I was jealous of the sea-captain, and at ten I was jealous of the clergyman in Jutland, and at twelve of the English architect, and at thirteen of the Swedish officer, and so on and so on."

Later in the evening, when he and Katharine were sitting alone near the great hay-barn, Katharine spoke of Knutty.

"She is the dearest old woman I have ever met," she said warmly. "I don't wonder that you all love her."

"I can never tell you what she has been to me," he answered. "It was always a great grief to me that – " He broke off.

"It was a great grief to me that – "

Again he broke off. He was trying to speak of Knutty's indifference to Marianne; and even this was too hard for him to say. Up in the mountains, he had felt that it would be easy for him to tell Katharine everything that he had in his heart, beginning with the story of Marianne and Marianne's death, and ending with himself and his love for her. But now that he was near her, he could say nothing about his own personal life and inner feelings. He could only bend forward and scratch a hole in the ground with his stick. Katharine remembered how Knutty had spoken of his "beginnings" and "breakings off," and she said:

"Knutty understands you through and through, Professor Thornton. Doesn't she?"

"Yes," he answered simply. "But why should you say that just now?"

"Oh, I don't know," Katharine answered. "I was thinking of her, and it came into my head. And I was so touched by her grief when she feared that she – we – had lost you."

"I do not know what she and the boy would have done without you," he said, still working with that stick.

Katharine was silent.

"And I cannot think what those men over at the Skyds-station would have done without you," he said. "Their last words to me this afternoon were, 'Tell her we shall always be wishing to serve her.'"

Katharine remained silent.

"There was this little packet which I was to give you," he said, after a pause. "It was the poor fellow's South African service-medal. You were to have it."

He watched her as she opened the packet and touched the medal. He watched her as she put it in the palm of her hand and looked at it with dim eyes. It would have been easy for him to have opened his heart to her then and there, if he could only have known that she was saying to him with speechless tongue:

"My own dear love, whilst I am looking at this soldier's medal, my heart is giving thanks that the lightning spared you to me."

But he could not guess that, and the moment passed.

The next day, when they were again alone, he attempted to speak.

"Do you remember my saying up at the Saeter that I tried never to dream?" he began.

"Yes," she said. "I have always wished to ask you why you should feel so strongly about dreams."

"I should like to tell you," he said eagerly. "I want to tell you. But – "

He broke off again, and turned to her with a pathetic smile on his face.

"Speech has never been easy to me," he said.

CHAPTER XVIII

BEDSTEFAR'S FUNERAL

The day before Bedstefar's funeral Jens and Alan came down from the mountain-lake laden with nearly two hundred pounds of trout, and the cotters' children finished their task of bringing in all the multebaer they could find; for no Norwegian entertainment, taking place at this season of the year, would have been considered complete without this much-loved fruit; and certainly it would seem that multebaer had a softening effect on the strange and somewhat hard Norwegian temperament. As Tante said, from her own personal observations of the previous days, multebaer spelt magic!

"Ibsen has not done justice to his country," she told Gerda. "He ought at least once to have described them as being under the influence of these berries. Then a softer side of their nature would have been made apparent to all. Why, the Sorenskriver himself becomes a woolly lamb as he bends over his plate of cloudberries-and-cream. He ought to have his photograph taken. No one would recognise him, and that is what photographs are for!"

They all helped to decorate the Gaard inside and out with branches of firs and birches. Bedstefar's black house was decorated too, and the whole courtyard was covered with sprigs of juniper and fir. A beautiful arch of fir and birch was raised over the white gate through which he would pass for the last time on his way down to the old church in the valley.

Katharine, together with Ragnhild and Ingeborg, spent many hours making strips of wreathing from twigs of the various berry-shrubs up in the woods. Karl used these for lettering; so that stretched from side to side of the arch ran the words, "Farvel, kjaere Bedstefar."

When he had finished, every one came out to see his work, and Mor Inga, turning to Tante, said proudly:

"My Karl is clever, isn't he?"

And she whispered:

"Three years ago he did that for our eldest son, and bitterly we were weeping then. I go about thinking of that now."

Then Tante and Mor Inga took a little stroll away from the others, outside the gate and down the road towards the great cowhouse. Part of this road, too, had been planted with tall fir-branches, so that Bedstefar would pass under the archway and through an avenue of green until he reached the outer white gate, which was the entrance to the Gaard enclosure. And here Mor Inga and Tante lingered, whilst the proud Norwegian heart gave vent to its sadness, and the kindly Danish heart beat in understanding sympathy, and the dead son's dog Jeppe came and whined softly in token that he too was mourning in remembrance of the past.

So the night, the bright Norwegian night, beginning to realise that its brightness was being threatened, seeing that the birches were counting their yellow leaves, even as we, no longer young and not yet old, count our grey hairs, this summer night passed almost imperceptibly into morning, and the activities of the next day began early.

Bedstemor, reinstated in her former rôle of leading lady of the Gaard, was in a state of feverish excitement. She was dressed in black, and wore over her bodice a fine black silk shawl one hundred years old. Her head was encased in a sort of black silk night-cap, edged with old white lace: so that her pretty face was framed in white. A slight flush on her cheeks made her look strangely youthful. She sat in the porch waiting to receive the guests; and by special request of Mor Inga and Solli himself, Tante, Gerda, and Katharine sat there too. They felt awkward at first, knowing themselves to be there in the capacity of sightseers rather than that of mourners; but Bedstemor's cheerful spirits put them at their ease. She was much interested in Katharine's dress-material, feeling the texture and comparing it with her own.

"It is very good," she said thoughtfully, "but not so good as mine!"

All the same, that dress-material worried her; she fingered it several times, nodded mysteriously, and seemed lost in thought; whether about Bedstefar or the dress-material, no one could of course decide. But, later, she spoke of some wreaths which had been sent, and she said quaintly:

"Min mand did not want any flowers. But it does not matter much what he wanted. He won't know, stakkar, will he?"

At last the guests began to arrive, some in carioles, some in stol-kjaerres, and some few in ordinary carriages. They all brought funeral-cakes in large painted baskets. As each conveyance drove up into the courtyard, one of the daughters, either Ragnhild, or Ingeborg, or Helga, went out to meet it, greeted the guests, and bore away the cake into the kitchen. It seemed to be the etiquette that the cake should be received in person by one of the family. The horses, most of them the knowing little Norwegian yellow Nordfjord pony, or else the somewhat bigger Gudbrandsdal black horse, were unharnessed and led away by the cotters. The guests advanced awkwardly to the porch, greeted Bedstemor, and turned to the strangers shyly, but were at once reassured by Tante's genial bearing and Katharine's friendly smile. Gerda, too, was at her best, and was feeling so cheerful that Tante feared she was going to break into song. Quaint, strange-looking people crossed that threshold, shook hands with every one in the porch, and passed into the house to find Bedstemor, who had disappeared into the hall, and was seated in a corner drinking port wine with an old friend. Wine and coffee were served at once, as a sign of welcome to the Gaard. The flag, which had been lowered to half-mast since Bedstefar's death, was now hoisted full-mast to welcome the guests to the proud Solli homestead. The women, some of them beautiful in feature, were ungraceful in form and bearing; they dressed no longer in the picturesque Gudbrandsdal costume, but were all clothed in ill-fitting black dresses, with no remnant of the picturesque anywhere: queenly-looking women, some of them born, one would think, to be mothers of Vikings; and most of them with proud pedigrees which would excite envy in many a royal breast: shy and awkward, most of them, even with each other. The men had perhaps a little more savoir faire, but it was easy to see that they all led lonely lives, and were part and parcel of that lonely land on which Nature has set a seal of mystic melancholy. Some of the men were fine fellows, but none as handsome as Solli, Karl, and Jens; but the Solli tribe had long been celebrated for their good looks, and old Bedstefar in his time had been voted the best-looking man in the whole of the Gudbrandsdal. The guests were nearly all Bönder (landowners), representing the best blood in the valley; most of them having the largest Gaards, and the best-decorated pews in the churches of the different districts. Then there was the Lensmand (bailiff), a weird old man, rather feeble of gait, but acute in wit. He seemed much taken with Katharine, and came several times to shake hands with her, pretending to be a newcomer each time. But he had to keep more in the background when his superior officer, the Foged (under-magistrate), appeared on the scene. This gentleman was, of course, a local personage, and he brought a very large wreath and wore an important black satin waistcoat. There was also the doctor, Distriktslaege18 Larsen, famous for his rough ways and disagreeable temper, but also for his skill in mending broken arms and legs during the "ski" season. He seemed rather scornful of the whole scene, but not of the port wine. And there was a Tandlaege19 (dentist), from Christiania, a nephew of the Sollis, who wore a very long black frock-coat and the most fashionable pointed boots. He was their representative man of the world and fashion, and they prized him greatly. There were yet two other precious persons – a member of the Storthing,20 Bedstemor's nephew, and his wife, rather a fine lady, who at first kept herself in 'splendid isolation,' but soon forgot that she was a Storthingsmand's wife with a Parisian dress, and threw her lot in with her un-Parisian-clothed relations. She was a little suspicious of the Englishwoman, perceiving indeed a formidable rival in well-cut garments; but directly Katharine and she began to speak to each other in an ingenious mixture of German and broken English, suspicions gave way to approbation, and she said to her husband:

"Surely the English cannot be such brutes if this is a specimen of them?"

"Pyt!" he said scornfully. "They are barbarians and brutes, all of them."

Nevertheless he found his way over to the Englishwoman, and was not at all eager to leave her company to join the cheerful contingents of guests who were now strolling over to the black house to take leave of poor Bedstefar's face. When at last he was obliged to go, he even asked her to come too; but as Tante bravely said, they had all seen poor dead Bedstefar often enough to satisfy the most punctilious Gaard etiquette. Soon the Praest arrived, a short man, with a kindly, uninspired countenance. He was accompanied by his wife and two daughters and the Klokker (clerk), who carried in a bag the Calvin ruff and gown still used by the Norwegian and Danish clergymen. For it was due to the position and dignity of the Sollis that most of the funeral service should be conducted in the Gaard itself. If Bedstefar had been of no special standing, he would have been taken without any preliminaries to the churchyard, and in the absence of the clergyman, the clerk would have said the prayers and sung the hymns, and when the clergyman had returned from his parochial duties in some other quarter, he would have thrown the earth and said the final words of committal over perhaps five or six patiently waiting coffins. But Bedstefar being who and what he was, had all possible honour shown him in his death, as in his marriage and at his birth.

The Praest took port wine, chatted with his friends, and went with Bedstemor to say farewell to Bedstefar. And then, at last, at last the coffin was closed and borne through the great hall into the inner sitting-room, preceded by the Praest, now in his vestments, and Bedstemor, who walked bravely by his side. The nearest relations were grouped round the coffin. The women-guests sat in the outer room; the men stood together in the hall. The cotters, their wives, and the servants of the house stood, some on the stairs, and some in the porch. Tante, Katharine, and Gerda, not remembering the custom that the men and women should be separate, sat in the hall, and were able to see through into the inner room, where Bedstemor, still gallantly comporting herself, joined in the dismal singing led by the clerk, and Mor Inga, thinking of the last time that the clerk led the singing in that very room, wept silently, and drew little Helga closer to her side. When the singing and prayers were over, the Praest gave a long funeral discourse, dwelling on poor Bedstefar's virtues, which he was known not to have possessed in overflowing measure: nevertheless tears flowed, and grim old men said, "Ja, ja," and the Praest was considered to have preached appropriately, and Bedstemor seemed gratified. Then the cotters raised the coffin, bore it out, and placed it on the low cart which had been painted black for the occasion; and Svarten, the clever black horse who never slipped, never failed in duty or intelligence, and knew every inch of that winding and awkward way down to the valley, Svarten drew his burden through the decorated gate.

"Farvel, Bedstefar," said every one.

Bedstemor stepped briskly into the carriage, together with the Praest, Solli, and Mor Inga. The daughters remained at home to preside over the final preparations for the feasting. The sons followed in a cariole, and all the other men-guests helped to harness their horses and started off leisurely in the procession, a long, straggling, dust-raising line of about fifty conveyances. The women stayed behind, drank coffee, and strolled about the house, examining everything, as Ragnhild predicted; peering into the huge old painted and decorated chests full of fine linen, looking at the old painted sledge and cradle, dating back from 1450, precious Solli possessions, and casting an eye on the old silver tankards, and on the famous old carved door and sides of a pulpit, formerly belonging to an old church which had been swept away by the falling of an avalanche some hundred and fifty years previously. Then there were the old painted cupboards and the queer-shaped old Norwegian chairs and stools, and the old-fashioned, richly-carved mangles, and the old-world slit of a recess in the wall for the Langeleik, and a fine old Hardanger violin which Bedstefar was reported to have played with uncommon skill; having been specially clever at giving descriptive improvisations of Nature in her many moods, and of things mystic, such as the song of the Huldre, and things human, such as the ringing of marriage-bells. Alas, alas, that old-world ways were dying out and old-world music too! Still there was much of the old atmosphere in the Solli Gaard, and no other homestead in the whole valley could boast of so many old-time treasures curiously mixed up with modern importations. So that the lady funeral-guests had much with which to amuse themselves, and they roamed into the different bedrooms, examined Tante's possessions, and Katharine's belongings, and did not seem at all abashed when Tante and Katharine discovered them in the very act. Of course not, for it was a day of entertainment; and as a sweet little old lady, a pocket edition of Bedstemor, said, with a twinkle in her eye:

"Thou knowest we are here to enjoy ourselves. We have come a long way. And there have not been many funerals or weddings in the valley lately."