Chapter XIV: Is in Several Ways Mysterious

Owen and Dick spent a pleasant hour on deck next morning with the dainty grey-eyed girl, while Paul and Captain Berentsen smoked and chatted in the deck-house.

In her neat serge gown, long sealskin travelling coat, and fur toque she was a delightful little companion. Anticipation of the coming event in Trondhjem filled her with intense, almost childish, excitement, and she had already made both the Englishmen promise to remain to be present at the marriage feast. To Paul—her Paul—she was utterly and entirely devoted. She spoke of him almost with every breath.

Leaning against the rail on the upper deck, she chatted merrily in English with the two men, always piquante and always amusing, as the ship rounded the high rocky headland of the Island of Kyalo. Suddenly, pointing with her mittened hand to the grey distance, she exclaimed:

“Look! There’s Hammerfest—the most northerly town in the world. You saw it on your journey north, of course.”

“We didn’t land,” Dick replied. “We put in there at night and left at dawn. Captain Martin said there was very little to see, and promised us a longer stay on our return.”

“I heard him say this morning that we’ll remain six hours there,” she replied. “I know the place quite well. I have an uncle who owns one of the boileries yonder.”

“And his factory contributes to the unpleasant effluvia, of course,” laughed Owen.

“I suppose so,” she answered. “But all these places must really seem very terrible to both of you after the sunshine and warmth and trees and flowers of your southern land. I love Christiania. Everything there is so bright and gay—and life altogether so very different.”

“You ought to see London,” Dick remarked. “There’s far more movement and bustle there than in Christiania.”

“Ah! yes. I have read so much of your great London, where the railways run underground. I would love to see it. Paul has promised to take me there some day.”

Jervoise held his breath. Paul! She spoke ever of that man. In her ignorance and inexperience she believed in him; believed all the lies he had told her. She worshipped him as a god.

Gradually they approached the small bay where the northernmost little wood-built town nestled at the foot of its stony hill. In the harbour were moored rows of small Russian schooners, which had come round from the White Sea for fish, together with some whalers, distinguishable by the white crow’s-nest upon their mast. Along the shore stood a row of wooden drying-houses and boileries for making cod-liver oil, all of them emitting an effluvia that already caused them to hold their noses. Above the other roofs rose the pointed wooden spire of the church against the rocky background. There, as at Vardo, Thyra explained, the sun never set from the middle of May until the end of July, and never rose from the middle of November until the end of January. On going ashore they found it a quaint and very interesting little place, notwithstanding the noxious odour of boiling cod that pervaded everything. In the Gronnevold Gaden were a number of stores and shops, and from the post office—built high from the ground on account of the deep snows experienced for so many months each year—the two Englishmen obtained their mail, which had been lying there for some weeks, together with a London newspaper or two, the most recent a month old.

Captain Berentsen, with Thyra, took Paul to introduce him to his brother-in-law, and not until a few moments before sailing did they scramble back on board.

Then, in the grey evening light, the vessel stood south for the Loppen Sea.

During that week’s voyage south to Tromso, and eventually to Trondhjem, calling at Lodingen, on the Lofoden Islands, at the rocky little island of Skjervo, threading the narrow Raftsund and the dangerous channels between the thousand islands north of Bodo, obtaining glimpses of the great pale-green glaciers of the Svartisen, they passed through the finest fjord scenery of Norway, and as each day succeeded day the air grew perceptibly warmer. They were returning to the European summer.

One afternoon, not long after leaving Bodo, with its background of irregular snow-capped mountains, they crossed the Polar Circle, their small signal-gun being fired to mark the event, while in the saloon a bottle of champagne was opened, and the future prosperity was wished to the happy pair now so soon to become man and wife.

Paul Grinevitch curiously enough, displayed no further animosity towards the Englishman. Ever since singing that song of Fanchonnette he had, indeed, showed a marked cordiality towards his fellow passenger, frequently chatting with him, and even on one or two occasions taking a hand at bridge. It was as though he had thrown down the gauntlet, and now stood defiant and triumphant.

Two passengers, bearded Norwegian merchants, had joined the ship at Tromso, and as they skirted the rocky coast, a grand panorama day after day, the merriment grew greater. The oppression of that terrible desolation of the bleak Nordland was being lifted from them all now that upon the land, right down to the sea shore, grew the firs and pines, while the houses and smiling villages of civilisation nestled beneath the brown rocks.

They were entering the Norway of the tourist, the picturesque fjords of the twelve-guinea-yachting-folk and the fjields of the tweed-attired personally-conducted. But the season was over. The last tourist steamer had gone south, and even though it was early September, winter was creeping on; in those latitudes there is no autumn.

Thyra’s gay, rippling laughter rang everywhere throughout the vessel as one afternoon they steamed up the beautiful Trondhjem Fjord towards the busy Northern port. All was excitement and bustle, and the deck was heaped with baggage. The girl had, in her lover’s presence, repeated the invitation to the two Englishmen to remain in Trondhjem and be present at the wedding, and as Grinevitch had added his cordial request with hers, Dick and Owen both accepted. Captain Martin, whom Berentsen and his daughter pressed to remain, had promised to do his best to anchor for three days before proceeding down to Hamburg.

Owen Odd was still sorely puzzled. He could not for the life of him decide whether, after all, Dick was really in love with Thyra or whether his friend, by some extraordinary intuition, believed Paul Grinevitch unfitted to be her husband.

Many times during walks along the oily deck with his friend he had reverted to the subject, but Dick had always declined to discuss the matter.

“I hope she will be very happy,” was all he would say. Never once did he again betray his animosity towards the man who was to be her husband. It was that very fact which mystified the doctor so completely.

Thyra and her lover had spent most of their time together seated in cosy corners out of the wind, chatting and discussing the future. When he was nigh the love-look was ever in her eyes—that expression which in a woman is so unmistakable.

On landing at last Dick and Owen took up their quarters at the Britannia Hotel, Paul having announced his intention of going to the Grand, where he had stayed on a previous occasion. Thyra went at once with her father to her aunt, the widow of a Government official, who occupied a large house facing the fjord, about a mile from the town. The house Thyra had pointed out to Jervoise as they approached the landing stage.

Trondhjem, surrounded by its green hills, proved to the travellers a pleasant little place with fine main streets broadly built in order to diminish the danger of fire, even though they were perhaps a little too full of shops of false curios and those rubbishy souvenirs prepared for English and German tourists who land there, and purchase articles of reindeer-horn, Lapp “skaller,” knives and caps, and make believe they have visited the North.

As at Hammerfest, on their journey north they had put in at night and sailed at dawn; therefore, after so much knocking about in the Arctic, Dick and his companion were glad to bid adieu to their rather narrow quarters on the storm-battered old _Mercur_, to sleep again in a civilised bed, and eat food that had not been tinned. A few days’ sojourn there, they resolved, would prepare them for the journey home. Therefore in the hotel they took their ease and waited for the wedding feast.

Martin they frequently met in mufti in the streets, but Paul Grinevitch, it appeared, was mostly with Thyra out at her aunt’s house. At first it had been uncertain whether the necessary formalities prior to the marriage could be completed within the three days at Martin’s disposal, but a note from old Jorgen Berentsen delivered at the hotel told them that all was in order, and that the wedding, which was to be of the quietest nature, was to take place in the quaint old cathedral of Trondhjem, wherein repose the relics of St. Olaf, and which is probably familiar in photographs to many readers of this drama of the Arctic seas.

That same evening the two Englishmen met Paul emerging from a jeweller’s in the Dronningens Gaden. At first the Russian endeavoured to avoid them, and seemed a trifle flurried at the encounter.

“No,” laughed Owen good-humouredly. “Now you might just as well confess! You’ve been to buy your bride a present. May we not be allowed to see it?”

With some reluctance the Russian at last handed the doctor a leather case, which, on being opened, disclosed a pretty hair-ornament in diamonds of chaste design in the form of three ears of barley.

The keen eyes of Grinevitch met Dick’s. In them was that same look of bold defiance and of triumph.

The Englishman lowered his gaze, made a remark of admiration of the present, and then spoke of something else.

“Well,” exclaimed the Russian presently, “you will be at the church, both of you, to-morrow at twelve.” And he rushed off, for he had, he said, to visit his _fiancee_.

“You hate that man, Dick—and he hates you!” Owen declared the instant Paul was out of hearing. “I saw it in the fellow’s eyes.”

Jervoise started at his friend’s words. Then he had noticed!

“Yes,” he replied, with a feeble attempt to laugh it off. “I—well, I suppose he’s jealous of me. Yet I can assure you he has not the slightest cause.”

Next day was bright and brilliant as Dick Jervoise passed from the warm sunlight into the grey, sombre interior of the great cathedral with its wonderful windows. That day he acted as though in a dream.

He saw the little group in the shadow before the altar, the pair kneeling, the pastor speaking in low, impressive tones in the Norwegian tongue. Not more than a dozen people were present in that vast edifice and all seemed attired in black. Owen whispered something, but he sat unheeding his friend’s words. Then there was a short prayer, and Thyra Berentsen and Paul Grinevitch rose from their knees man and wife. He saw the passionate love-look in her eyes, as arm in arm they walked out. Yes. She loved him entirely and devotedly; she believed in him as other women had believed! Ah! it was all tragic—horrible.

Dick drove to the Hotel Angleterre, where the feast was to be held and where he stood to congratulate the bride and bridegroom, though his words almost froze upon his lips. The food he afterwards took almost choked him. He had been compelled to stand by and see that sweet-faced innocent girl, so full of plans for the future, sacrificed to that man whom he dare not rise up and denounce—that man who had sung “Fanchonnette,” and who stood triumphant.

At the feast there was much merriment. Old Jorgen, beaming with good-fellowship and satisfaction at the match made by his daughter, related some of his best stories, throwing his sister-in-law and the other guests into fits of laughter, while on every hand the bride and bridegroom received congratulations and toasts in their honour until Dick Jervoise could no longer bear it. He rose, making an excuse that he must send a telegram, and, going out, did not return.

That night at seven he and Owen took their seats in the express for Christiania, his intention being to cut himself adrift in future from the newly-wedded pair. That man’s presence was to him a perpetual torture. His evil, crafty face brought back all the bitter past. Owen was aware of the deadly hatred existing between the men, but of course believed it to be owing to jealousy. He suspected that his friend loved the beautiful Thyra.

Dick had sent a hurried note to the Grand, wishing Paul Grinevitch a cold adieu, and was greatly surprised, while he and Owen were seated together in their compartment at the moment of departure, to see Paul and his bride upon the platform, followed by old Jorgen and Captain Martin, the latter more spruce and dandified than ever.

“Why, of course, I quite forgot!” cried Owen. “They go to the capital to spend their honeymoon! I didn’t expect, however, they’d be travelling by our train.”

A compartment at the rear had been reserved for the pair; therefore the two Englishmen descended, and, having greeted them, promised to see them on their arrival in Christiania next morning.

Then the train moved off, and through the brilliant, moonlit night wound due southward among those fertile valleys of the Hedenmark, until, at ten o’clock next morning, the travellers found themselves in the Norwegian capital.

On alighting, the Englishmen greeted the happy pair, Paul promising to send his address in Petersburg to Dick’s club in London. They had, he said, decided to go to the Hotel Victoria, at the corner of the Raadhus-Gaden, for a few days, as Thyra wished to visit her relations and one or two of her old schoolfellows. The Englishmen, in reply, said they were putting up at the Grand.

“We may perhaps meet again before you leave Christiania,” the young wife exclaimed merrily as she held out her hand, and Dick Jervoise bent over it gallantly.

As he did so he whispered:

“Remember your promise! Make excuses to him to get away, for I shall be awaiting you. Be careful to arouse no suspicion.”

Then, with a quick, meaning glance, a glance of bitter hatred at her husband, who was standing near, he raised his hat, and, turning upon his heel, walked across to the fiacre, whereon the baggage was already piled.

“Well, Dick, old chap,” remarked Owen, with a slight sigh, as they drove together out of the station, “that little incident of our lives has, I suppose, ended. By Jove! how lovely she looks!”

“Yes,” responded his friend hoarsely, “it has ended—but badly for her, poor little girl, I fear—very badly.”

“You seem to know something, Dick!”

“Yes,” replied his friend, “I do; I could tell a story that would amaze you.”