Chapter IV: The Touchstone of Misfortune

Thyra’s home was very plain and simple. Up there, in the far-away North, they are all simple folk, honest, hardy, strong of heart and strong of hand.

The dismal little street of Vardo consisted of two rows of low, wood-built, inartistic houses, mostly without an upper floor, the majority being roofed with peat, upon which grew a varied assortment of the Arctic mosses. One or two of the houses were tiled, and one of these—one somewhat superior to the others, inasmuch as it possessed an upper storey, where curtains showed at the big, ugly square windows—was occupied by old Captain Berentsen.

On the same evening that Paul had made that inexplicable declaration to Thyra the girl was seated in the upstairs dining-room with her father, her head bent beneath the lamp trying to read an English novel, while old Jorgen himself lounged in his easy chair near the stove, smoking his big Norwegian pipe.

In Vardo those who possess a house of one storey live upstairs because the deep snows of winter too frequently shut out the light from the windows of the lower floor. The room wherein sat the pretty girl and her grey-bearded, weather-beaten father was not a particularly comfortable one, if judged by our southern standard of luxury. The floor was carpetless, the chairs were cane-bottomed, the walls were of wood, and upon them were one or two cheap Russian oleographs of brilliant colouring. Over the door hung a small _ikon_, or holy picture, for Thyra’s mother had been Russian, from Archangel.

At one end of the room was the buffet of varnished pine, while at the other was a cottage piano, one of the very few in that most northerly point of Lapland. The windows were double, to keep out the cold, and before them were two or three sickly-looking flowers in pots.

The pot-plant is the hobby of the people of Finmarken. In almost every house one will find a wretched little geranium or two, with their blooms dwarfed by the uncongenial climate and surroundings, or a pet rose, stunted and unhealthy, with its blossom drooping or its bud already fading before it had opened.

As nothing grew out of doors in that high latitude, Thyra had brought up those plants with her from Christiania, a thousand miles south, when she returned from school, and she had carefully tended and nursed them ever since.

With her elbows upon the table, she was deeply absorbed in the English sixpenny edition of a popular detective story which one of her old schoolfellows had sent her. In the zone of light from the small petroleum table-lamp her face, now that her cap was removed, showed even more perfect in its beauty, so sweet and so thoroughly feminine.

Outside the storm howled fiercely, the tearing wind, its force unbroken from the ice-pack, shaking the windows and ever and anon causing the very house to tremble. But was it not the usual condition of things in August? Therefore neither father nor daughter made remark.

Old Jorgen Berentsen, sitting there in the shadow watching his daughter as he smoked, was assuredly a fine figure of a man—a man of many adventures. On one occasion his vessel had been wrecked on the barren coast of Melville Land, in East Greenland, and after months of suffering and starvation, during which all his companions died except two, he had been rescued by another whaling vessel. On a second occasion the ship he commanded had foundered, and the crew managed to reach land at the terrible delta of the Lena, in Northern Siberia, near where De Long and the party of the _Jeannette_ had perished two years before.

Little wonder was it, therefore, that his brow should be so deeply furrowed, that his hair should be grey, that his voice should be gruff, or that his strong hand should possess such an iron grip.

Forty years of navigating the Arctic Ocean, first high up in the crow’s-nest and afterwards as captain, had stirred within him the call of the Polar Mystery as it stirs every man. Even now, retired as he was, with the sinecure of harbour-master, and acting as vice-consul for several foreign countries, he often closed his eyes and imagined himself back again upon the bridge of his grimy, evil-smelling whaler with the biting wind whistling through the rigging and the brilliant aurora waving across the northern sky.

Living as he constantly had done in the land of the Great Night, his aid and advice had been sought by almost every Arctic explorer of the past twenty years. It was he who had provided the sled-dogs for Nansen and for Jackson; he who had given advice to Shackleton upon his equipment for the Antarctic; he who had been consulted by Peary, by the Duke of the Abruzzi, and by Wellman of airship fame. To him the ice-bound coasts of Franz Josef Land, of Nova Zembla, of Spitzbergen, and of Greenland, with their steel-blue glaciers and snow-covered bluffs, were all well known. Indeed, he knew far more of Arctic life, Arctic conditions, and Arctic mysteries than any Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England.

Nowadays, however, his adventures were all of the past. His wife was dead and, with his daughter to bear him company, he led a frugal, quiet, uneventful life, a life that bored him somewhat in summer and became well-nigh intolerable in the three months of perpetual night from November to January. Those dead, dark, bitterly cold days, when the lamp burned perpetually and when the little town was silent as the grave, made him long for the old activity at sea and the keen excitement of hunting the leviathan of the deep.

The last days before his retirement had been spent as captain of a passenger vessel between Bergen and New York, hence he had learned to speak English in addition to his native Norwegian, and Finnish and French.

A ring at the door-bell below aroused them. Thyra raised her head from her book with a sigh. At that moment she did not wish to be disturbed.

“Oh, I quite forgot, my dear,” the old man exclaimed. “The _Mercur_ came in this afternoon, and I asked the captain to come in and bring his two passengers, young Englishmen. I met them on the quay. They seem to be gentlemen.”

Thyra frowned slightly as she heard old Freyia, the Lap woman who acted as housekeeper and maid-of-all-work, go to the door, and next instant came the cheery voice of the captain of the _Mercur_, the black old cargo-boat which, trading between Vardo and Hamburg, and calling at all the ports down the Norwegian coast, brought them the mail from the south.

When each six or seven weeks the _Mercur_, with her high black funnel and white bands, appeared through the driving mists and entered the harbour it was always a day of activity, for the captain was highly popular everywhere, and with the visits of the _Mercur_ came news of friends, and the stores without which the dwellers on that remote little island could not exist.

“Well, Miss Thyra,” exclaimed the captain cheerily as he entered the room. “And how are you getting on up here, after Christiania, eh?”

He was a tall, rather good-looking, fair-moustached man, well set-up, and extremely smart both in manner and dress. Well known to all along the Norwegian coast as something of a dandy, his uniform was always spotless, the braid upon it was untarnished, and his boots always well shined, even though he sailed those stormy seas. Besides, though he was Norwegian born and bred, his name, curiously enough was typically English—John Martin.

“Well, Captain Martin,” exclaimed the girl, with a laugh, as she cast a furtive glance at the two strangers behind him, “here it is scarcely so gay as in Christiania, of course. Yet it is my duty to be here and look after dad, so, of course, I must not grumble.”

“Allow me to introduce two friends of mine,” the captain said in fair English. Then, indicating the elder of the pair of Englishmen, a good-looking, dark-haired, merry-eyed fellow in a well-cut suit of blue serge, he said, “This is Mr. Jervoise—Miss Thyra Berentsen.”

The other, a short, rather thick-set man of thirty-two, with a small moustache and wearing gold pince-nez, he introduced as Doctor Owen Odd, adding, “These gentlemen have been with me all the way from Bergen—my only passengers this trip.”

“And a most delightful time we’ve had, Miss Berentsen,” declared Dick Jervoise. “Your friend the captain has been untiring in his efforts to make us comfortable in the heavy weather we ran into after rounding the North Cape.”

Thyra raised her eyes to his, and regarding him for a second, saw honesty in his gaze. Then she smiled answering:

“Everybody knows how pleasant Captain Martin makes a voyage. I’ve been with him twice down to the south.”

“And I hope you’ll make many more trips with me, Miss Thyra,” declared the fair-haired man who, ashore, had exchanged his spotless uniform for thick grey tweeds.

At old Jorgen’s invitation the trio sat down, the two Englishmen delighted with their experience. It was unique to be entertained in a house so far north—and by such a delightful hostess, with her beautiful face and her pretty broken English.

The four men were soon chatting, while Thyra, instantly at ease with her English visitors, busied herself in setting out the little glasses for the vodka.

Martin was explaining to his English friends the adventurous career of the old man who sat there smoking his long pipe with its carved meerschaum bowl, and they were listening, entranced by the captain’s story.

The old fellow, however, modestly disclaimed all title to be classed among Arctic explorers.

“I’m only a whaling skipper,” he declared, laughing. “My explorations have been done out of necessity, and were the outcome of mishap.”

Dick Jervoise glanced around the small, plain room, devoid of any cosiness. He noted the small, sickly looking flowers, the double windows, the big stove roaring though it was an August night. All was so strange, so unusual, so extraordinary after the civilisation and luxury of London.

He fixed his eyes upon the beautiful countenance of the girl who offered him the Russian cigarettes. In all his wide experience never had he seen a face so sweet, so entirely perfect. And he noticed that Owen was also gazing at her in wrapt admiration.

She raised her big grey eyes from the box suddenly, and their gaze met.

In the white lamplight Captain Martin saw the slight flush rise to the girl’s cheeks. He smiled within himself for, as a bachelor, he was never averse to a mild flirtation. He knew well how much the girl had been admired down in Christiania, and had heard how she might have made a most excellent match with one of the richest men in Norway if old Jorgen had not ordered her to return home to that life of grey monotony which was surely sufficient to crush all the gaiety and brightness out of any young girl’s heart.

For nearly an hour they sat together chatting, Thyra explaining to the two visitors many interesting facts concerning the nomad Laplanders and their habits—some of whom, dressed in their reindeer skins, they had seen that afternoon—while the pair sat listening, entranced by the music of her voice.

Presently the door-bell rang again, and a few seconds later a short, stout, pompous man with a red, pimply face, and a big diamond in his cravat, entered the room.

It was Peter Sundt.

Thyra held the man in distinct dislike. She had hated him ever since she was a child.

Of late he had seemed to hold some irresistible power over her father, a power that was, to her, an entire and complete mystery.

As he entered she did not fail to notice how uneasily her father stirred in his armchair, or that the greeting extended to him was not that genuine, hearty one with which he had met the captain of the _Mercur_.

What secret was there between them?

The Englishmen were introduced, and the coarse, red-faced, loud-voiced man tossed off his vodka at a gulp, and seemed to treat everybody with supreme disdain—even Thyra herself.

Her eyes again met those of Dick Jervoise, and in them he discerned a mutely expressed disgust. To him it seemed that society in Vardo was not very refined, and he pitied her, compelled as she was to live amid such depressing, soul-killing surroundings.

At last Martin and his friends rose to go, and Jervoise, promising to call again before the _Mercur_ sailed, bowed over the girl’s hand, followed by the doctor.

She accompanied them downstairs to the door, leaving her father alone with Peter Sundt.

The instant she had left the room the coarse-featured man rose, and approaching the grey-haired captain, bent and asked in a low, hard voice:

“Well, have you decided? I’ve come here for your answer, remember.”

The old man removed his pipe slowly from his lips and looked straight into the other’s face.

“I—I haven’t had sufficient time to consider. I—”

“But you will decide to-night—now—before I leave this house,” declared the man firmly. “If your answer is in the negative you know well what the result will be.”

“Ah! I see,” cried the other fiercely. “You—you now hold the dagger at my throat, because you know that I am utterly in your hands. Are you a man that you should make this demand, Peter Sundt, or are you one of hell’s fiends?”

But Peter Sundt, quite unperturbed by his victim’s outburst, coolly poured out another glass of vodka and tossed it off, a smile of triumph upon his pimply face as he did so.

He knew that Jorgen Berentsen was as wax in his hands.