Katharine Frensham: A Novel

"Yes, Peer Gynt's stue stands for an idea in more senses than one. Day after day, when I have not been able to open my heart to her, I have thought that perhaps I should be able to break through my silence on our pilgrimage to Peer Gynt's stue."

The morning was fair and fresh; summer was passing; there was a touch of crispness in the air which suggested frost and 'iron nights,' dreaded by the peasants before the harvest should have been gathered in. Katharine and Clifford kept to the course of the stream, which was a quick, though a steep, way down to the saw-mill, beautifully situated near a foss of the glacier-river, the roar and rush of which they heard up at the Solli Gaard. There was a bridge across this river, and they stood there watching the tumbling mass of water, and recalling the morning when they had passed over to the other side on their way to the Saeters. The little Landhandleri across the bridge was being besieged by no less than four customers. Their carioles were fastened to a long rail outside the queer little shop which contained everything mortal man could want, from rough butter-boxes and long china pipes to dried cod and overalls.

"I never see these places without thinking of the isolated shops dumped down in lonely districts out in the west of America," Katharine said. "Some of them were kept by Norwegians too."

"They have had their training in isolation here, you see," Clifford said, "and so go out knowing how to cater for isolated people. And they make a small fortune quickly and return. At least some of them return, those in whom the love of country outweighs everything else in life."

"I should be one of those," Katharine said. "I should always yearn to return."

"I remember your saying you would like to bring all the broken-hearted exiles home," he said.

"Yes," she said, "I would."

"You have a heart of pity," he said, turning to her.

"I am sorry for those who have lost their country," she said. "I have seen them suffer. If I were a millionaire, I would find out some of the worst cases, and give them back their country and the means to enjoy it, or the opportunity of dying in it."

So they talked or were silent as the mood seized them. They were happy, and frankly glad to be together alone. They left the bridge, passed along the main road, through fragrant fir-woods, and came to a most picturesque spot where two rivers, one of them the glacier-river, met and rushed on together as one. They crossed this long bridge, and found themselves on the other side of the main valley. Here they looked back and could discern the big Solli Gaard, perched proudly on the opposite mountain-ridge. Then their way lay along the easy road by the winding river. It retreated from them, returned, retreated. The sun jewelled the clear part of it with diamonds, and the strange milky glacier part of it with opals. Finally it left them, and they could scarcely reconcile themselves to its departure, but strolled back once more to enjoy its gracious company. But at last they said farewell to it, and went on to the old brown church, at the back of which they expected, from Bedstemor's instructions, to find the steep path leading up to Peer Gynt's stue. They halted, to see the sunburnt old church, and to rest. Katharine was struck by its beautiful proportions. Rough and without any features of special architectural interest, it presented a harmony in itself which was arresting. She made the remark; and Clifford, who knew many things about the North, was able to tell her that this was characteristic of the Norwegian churches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The date of this church was the middle of the eighteenth century. It was rather a rich, well-cared-for church from a Norwegian point of view, and it was full of interest for strangers. The painted and decorated pews, with the rich peasants' names in floriated design, attracted Katharine. The Sollis' pew was, of course, one of them. The pulpit was elaborately carved, and was painted and gilded in generous fashion. There was a rood-screen which bore the arms of Norway, painted also in flamboyant style; and a shelf on the top supported eight or ten figures of personages in Scripture lore, with their symbols. Some of these figures were almost grotesque. It was difficult to believe that they were of the same recent date as the church. The altarpiece, the Last Supper, carved and painted, bore the date 1740; yet in conception it looked like a piece of work from the Middle Ages, and Dutch in character. Quainter still were the weird pictures hanging on the walls, all of them gifts of pious people. The subjects were of course religious ones: Jacob wrestling with the Angel, the Passage of the Red Sea, the Garden of Gethsemane. They all dated back to the early part of the eighteenth century, and were most primitive in idea and execution, testifying silently, not only to the piety of the donors, but to the uninfluenced isolation of the interior of Norway. One of them had the inscription, "To the honour of God and for the ornament of the church is this picture given by a rich and pious girl at a cost of three dollars of the realm!"

Katharine and Clifford examined these queer things, and finally sat down in the Sollis' grand pew. The world was beginning to be even as this old brown church – empty, save for them. He was thinking, as he sat by her side, how little she, with her free, open-hearted nature, could guess at the grim and almost insurmountable difficulties of a prisoner of silence like himself. She would never know how many times he had tried to begin the story which he wished passionately to tell her. But each time that he had failed, he at least knew that he was gaining courage. He did not realise that Katharine had retreated into herself since that anxious day at the Skyds-station; for Mrs Stanhope's words up at the Saeter had been echoing in her ears. She was not the woman to allow her own impulses to be checked by the opinion of Mrs Stanhope. Her most accentuated feeling about Mrs Stanhope was indignation; nevertheless, the malignant words of that bigot had engendered a vague shyness in Katharine's mind, which held her back from helping Clifford. And also, she was passing through a phase of emotional passiveness, which Nature, in her wisdom, insists on, after any great and generous giving out of sympathy, love, and anxious concern. At such moments even the most reckless spendthrifts of self can give nothing. They wait. And if no one ministers to them, they pass out into the darkness of the night to find recovery. So Katharine waited; and they sat on together in the Sollis' decorated pew, cut off from the outside world, and silent. The moment of liberty did not come to the prisoner then in the old brown church. It almost came, but not quite.

When they left the church, they took the steep path accurately described by Bedstemor. It was steep and rough, and Clifford turned to help Katharine over some of the difficult bits; but she was as active as he, and not at all breathless. She was astonished that there should be no easier road than this one up to several old Gaards which they skirted in their ascent. It seemed impossible for the farm-people to bring any heavy loads up or down such a rough path. Clifford told her that it was characteristic of the Norwegians of a previous generation.

"In former days," he said, "they made a road, any kind of road, straight to their goal, over and through any difficulties. The Sorenskriver thinks it a bad sign that they now make easy and circuitous ones. He would like this uncompromising one. He would think that there still remained some of the old rugged stubbornness in the Norwegian character, and some of its simple hardihood."

"We can tell him about it," Katharine said, smiling at the thought of the Sorenskriver. She was thinking what great good luck they had had in getting off without him!

So they mounted higher and higher, pausing now and then to look down at the valley, which on this side had a different appearance from that to which they were now affectionately accustomed from the Solli Gaard. Here the valley was much narrower, and the view, though beautiful, was less comprehensive, but more intimate. From the Solli Gaard they saw the great Gudbrandsdal as a vision. From the hillside behind the old brown church they saw it as a human reality. They noticed, too, that the land was more encumbered with rocks and stones in this district than in the region round about the Solli Gaard; although there also were outward and visible signs of the patient labour with which the Norwegians struggled against a hard nature to make their country productive. But here the battle proclaimed itself even more eloquently; and Katharine, who noticed everything, spoke of it.

"No wonder they are a melancholy people, if they have had to struggle so hard to get so little," she said.

"It is not that which has made them melancholy," Clifford replied. "It is the loneliness."

He was silent for a moment, and then went on:

"Certain nations seem set apart for loneliness, even as certain people. Nature has willed it so. Have you not seen how in active bustling communities there are always several detached persons who prefer to go away into the wilderness? They belong there. It is their native soil, even if they have been born in crowded cities. I believe my father was one of those persons."

"I have seen them out in Colorado," Katharine said. And she added impulsively:

"But you are not one of them."

"No," he said without looking up at her; "I am not one of them. I was forced into my wilderness."

And again she could not help him. For the very life of her, she could not have said to him:

"Tell me about your wilderness, and I will tell you about mine."

In a few minutes they came to a Gaard hanging over the hillside, which Clifford thought, from Bedstemor's description, must be Peer Gynt's homestead. He hurried on to inquire, and soon came back to the great rock where Katharine was resting.

"Yes," he said, "we have reached our destination. And that is supposed to be Peer Gynt's house – that old stue there. The other buildings making up the Gaard are newer, as you can see. The Gaardmand's wife says many people come to visit it."

So there they were, at last, at Peer Gynt's home, perched up on high, looking straight down on the valley and the river – a wild, isolated spot, fit abode for a wild, restless spirit. The Gaardmand's wife showed them over the old stue, which was very much like others they had seen, built of great tree-trunks, and black with age outside, and mouldy with age within; and when they had looked and looked, each of them remembering Knutty's injunction to enjoy, believe, and to be seized by the "spirit of place," she took them into the courtyard, and pointed out another old building used as stables.

"Peer Gynt was buried here," she said. "He was too wicked to be buried in the churchyard."

They lingered there for a long time, held in very truth by the spirit of place. Clifford knew his 'Peer Gynt' well, and Katharine, who had read it in English, understood a little of its real significance. He, knowing its whole scope from beginning to end, was able to make the poem real to her. He told her that Peer Gynt, brought up by his mother Ãse on legends and fairy tales, was typical to Ibsen's mind of the Norwegian nation, brought up on Sagas, and at the moment when the poem was written, not able to put away phantasms, and awake to the realities of life. He admired the poem intensely, and seemed delighted that she was interested in all he had to tell her about it. And he was moved at being in its very atmosphere. He had forgotten his doubts about the genuineness of the place.

"Cannot you see him coming down from the mountains after one of his escapades," he said, "his mother standing scolding him, and then listening entranced to his fantastic stories? Can't you see him seizing his mother when she was a nuisance to him, carrying her over the river and putting her on the grass-roof of the corn-house, where she could not interfere with him? Was there ever such a fellow? And there is the river – the very river!"

He pointed to it with almost a child's eagerness.

"He must have crossed there, you see, on his way to the wedding at which he stole the bride and took her away into the mountains," he said. "And where was it, I wonder, that he used to lie in the woods, dreaming his dreams of action and achievement which never came to anything? Perhaps yonder, sometimes, in that little copse over there."

Then he turned once more to the stue.

"And to think that there, actually there, poor Ãse died," he said. "Don't you remember how, even at her deathbed, he could not face the reality of the moment, but buoyed her and himself up with pitiful romancing? I can see the whole scene as I never saw it before."

It was a long time before they tore themselves away, and then they did not go far. They sat down by some stones outside the Gaard enclosure, still talking about Peer Gynt.

"The poem always stirs me," said Clifford. "I know nothing in literature which ever took a greater hold on me. It may be partly because Knutty taught me to know and understand the Northern mind. But the more I read it, the more I see that it is not typical of the Northern temperament only. Peer Gynt stands for us all, whether we hail from the North, the South, the East, the West; for all of us who cover up realities with fantasies."

"But do we not all have to help ourselves with make-believe, more or less?" Katharine said. "If we went through life doing nothing but facing facts, we should be intolerable to ourselves and other people. Surely now and then we need to rest on fantasy?"

She was silent a moment, and then went on:

"We make a fantastic picture to ourselves that we are wanted in the world, that we have work to do, a call to answer, things and people needing us, and us only. If we did not do that where should we be?"

He turned to her suddenly:

"Have you felt that too?" he said.

"Yes," she answered.

"So have I," he said.

"But you had, and have always had, your work," Katharine said, "your own definite career, which no one, nothing, could take from you."

And as soon as the words had left her lips, she remembered that Knutty was always saying that if ever a man had had his career marred and checked by others, that man was Clifford Thornton. She could have bitten her tongue out. She did not know that she had helped him by what she had said.

He drew a little nearer to her.

"There is a passage from 'Peer Gynt' which has always haunted me," he said:

"'We are thoughts,Thou shouldst have thought us…''We are a riddle,Thou shouldst have solved us…''We are songs,Thou shouldst have sung us…A thousand times hast thouCrushed and choked us.In thy heart-depthsWe have lain and waitedVainly for thy summons…'

That is the true picture of my career."

"Every humble-hearted person with gifts would think that," Katharine said impulsively.

It was as though she were defending him from some accuser; as though she imperiously wished to sweep all regrets and grievings out of his horizon. He felt her tender sympathy enfolding him, and it gave him courage. With one tremendous effort he broke down the wall of reserve. The long-imprisoned thoughts came tumbling out. At first they freed themselves with effort, and then with natural ease. Katharine listened wonder-struck. He spoke of the years which had gone, of Marianne, of her strange attitude to his work, of the battle which he had always been fighting between bitterness and self-reproach, of the inroad which it had made on his powers of thought and concentration, of his contempt for himself that he had not been able to deal more successfully with difficulties which spoilt her life and his.

Katharine, knowing from Knutty something of the daily difficulties which had beset him, was touched by his gentle chivalry of heart and spirit; for he did not say one single ungentle word of Marianne, nor give expression to one single ungenerous criticism. His criticism was of himself, not her. He said repeatedly that if he had cared enough to find the key to a good understanding, it could have been found.

"I can tell you all this so easily now that I have once begun," he said. "I have been longing to lay it all before you; time after time I have tried to speak to you of my poor Marianne, of her death, of the boy's disbelief in me, of my own disbelief in myself, of the secret trouble which has gnawed at my heart, and which, in spite of reason, will gnaw at my heart until I have told it to you. You are the only one in all eternity to whom I could tell it."

"Tell it," Katharine said gently.

Then he told her.

And as he told her Peer Gynt's stue faded from her eyes – the river: the birch-wood: the distant mountains: the valley: Norway. She was back in England once more. She saw a lonely man sitting dreaming by his fireside. She saw him go slowly up the staircase and hasten his step as he heard Marianne's voice calling to him in alarm. She saw the expression of shock and pain on Marianne's face. She heard him saying:

"It was only a dream – your dream and my dream – let it go the way of all dreams."

She saw him go down to the stable and saddle his horse. She saw him ride out into the darkness of the night. She saw him throw himself on the bed, worn out in body and spirit. She heard Alan calling to his father. She saw Marianne leaning back, dead, and with that terrible look of shock and pain on her poor dead face.

The very simplicity and directness of the man's story added to its significance. That he could tell it at all, showed his terrible need of telling it. That he could tell it thus unreservedly, showed his entire trust in her, and his entire freedom from any desire to give the impression that he had suffered without having inflicted suffering.

The directness was almost more than Katharine could bear. More than once she could have cried out to him to stop. But she had not the heart to check him; and on he went, his intensity, his frankness increasing the whole time.

"Yes," he said, "she left me; she died in that terrible way, and I was alive to fight with and face the possibility that I had caused her death. Hundreds of times I said that if I could have tuned myself to be more in harmony with the best that was in her and in me, my dreaming thoughts of her would never have broken through the bounds of kindness, would never have attained to that fierce acuteness which penetrated to her so ruthlessly in her own defenceless state of dreaming. By what force, by what process they reached her, I, in my ignorance, cannot pretend to know. I only know that our minds met each other then as they had never met in normal life."

He paused a moment. Katharine thought that he had come to the end of his power of telling. But before she had finished thinking that brief thought, he had begun again.

He said he had been tortured and puzzled by that dream until his reason nearly left him. There was no one to whom he could have confided it. He could not have told it to Knutty, for he never had been able to speak with her about Marianne. He could not talk it out with any one who might have given time and serious thought to such phenomena. Perhaps that might have helped him more than anything at the time: to have talked it out, analysed it, found the relative meaning of it, and satisfied his intelligence about it by means of some one else's intelligence. But that was an impossibility to him; and so it remained locked in his heart, gnawing at his heart whilst he battled with it alone.

"When the boy began to turn from me, it gnawed more and more," he said. "When I learned that Marianne's friend was openly condemning my conduct to her, it gnawed more and more. For I said to myself, 'If the boy knew the awful thought which is haunting me, if Mrs Stanhope knew it, if they all knew it, what then?' So I kept my secret to myself. I had the sense to know that I was justified in doing that. And I turned to my work and tried to forget. I turned to my work, which had always been a haven when I was able to keep it uninvaded by – by outside influences. It was invaded now. I could not forget. I went as usual to my study and laboratory, and I tried to continue my neglected investigations; but I failed from the first. Time after time I tried. You would scarcely believe how often – and always in vain. For my mind was filled with the one imperious thought from which there was no escape – not even for a moment: Was I guilty of Marianne's death? Time after time I found myself saying aloud, 'Have I killed Marianne, or have I not killed Marianne?'"

Katharine had been leaning forward gazing fixedly into the distance, but she stood up now, and turned to him.

"Don't go on," she said in a stifled voice. "I cannot bear any more."

Then he saw the keen distress on her face.

"Oh," he cried in an agony of remorse, "I have been thinking only of myself – forgive me – "

"No, no, it isn't that," she said. "But you have suffered so much, and you are suffering now in telling me, and I cannot bear it."

"Forgive me, forgive me," he pleaded almost inaudibly. "It was my soul's necessity to tell you – to lay it all before you – so that you might know me and judge me."

"Judge you!" she cried.

And there was a world of love and understanding in her eyes, in her voice, and on her face.

She turned to him with outstretched hands; but as she turned, she saw a vision of Marianne leaning back in the arm-chair, dead, and with that expression of alarm on her poor dead face.

Katharine's hands fell.

"Let us go home," she said in a voice which was full of pain.

So in silence they descended the steep hillside.

In silence they went along by the river, and over the bridge, through the fir-woods, and up towards the Solli Gaard.

CHAPTER XX

Katharine went straight to her room and threw herself on her bed. All her thoughts were of Clifford. Her heart was flooded with love and pity for him, a hundredfold intensified now that she knew his secret history. The manner of Marianne's death and the long-continued silent suffering of the man appalled her. She had known from the beginning that he had suffered acutely; but when she had called him the man with the broken spirit, she had little realised the torture which his gentle and chivalrous spirit was undergoing day by day, hour by hour. He had fought and conquered. She knew that. She knew that she, coming into his wilderness, had helped him to do that; even as he, coming into her wilderness of loneliness, had brought her a new life and a new outlook.

Judge him – judge him! The words rang in the air and echoed back to her.

"My belovèd!" she cried, "I shall yet be able to tell you all that is in my heart. You suffered – and she suffered too – that poor Marianne – and I saw her face before me when I turned to you – and, oh, my belovèd, we could only go home in silence."

Her genius of sympathy did not leave that poor Marianne out in the cold. Marianne's turbulent temperament, Marianne's jealous rages, all the impossibilities resulting from a wrong aura, were reverently garnered into Katharine's tender understanding. For she knew Marianne had suffered too; and that in that strange dream, that heart-breaking final communication between husband and wife, Marianne had learnt the truth, and the truth had killed her. She had gone to her death with a knowledge which was too much for her life. The truth and not Clifford had killed her: the truth, spoken in a defenceless moment.

In the midst of her serious musings there came a knock at the door. Katharine answered, "Come in," and Alan appeared. His manner was, as usual, shy, and he blushed a little. He was always greatly pleased to see Katharine. He brought two English letters for her. His young face and young presence broke in upon her as a song of spring.

"Don't go," she said, holding out her hand to him. "What have you got there?"

"Oh, it's only a drawing I've been doing of the cowhouse," he said in his shy way. "Knutty wanted it. She says it isn't bad."

"It is very good, I think," Katharine said. "I wish it were for me."

"Oh, I am going to do something ripping good for you before I go back to school," he said. "I've begun it."

She smiled her thanks to him.

"Shall you be glad to go back to school?" she asked, as she broke open her letters.

"I shall not like to leave father," he said, without looking up. "But he has promised to come and see me."