Chapter VI: Strange Matters of Fact

When Thyra, bright and fresh-looking, entered their own small living-room on the following morning, she found her father seated in his armchair, bent, pale, and tired.

The room, the double windows of which were seldom, if ever, opened, smelt strongly of the odour of overnight tobacco; the dirty vodka glasses were still upon the table, and as the grey, sunless light fell upon the rugged face of the burly old whaler the girl saw that something serious was amiss.

The room with its wooden walls, its wooden ceiling, and its gaudy oleographs, presented a strangely bizarre appearance in the morning light, while it was at once apparent to her that her father had not been to bed.

“Why, dad,” she cried in alarm, falling upon her knees before the seated man, “what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, my child, nothing,” the burly old fellow replied hoarsely, as his hand wandered to her white brow and he tenderly stroked her fair hair.

“But there is—I know there is!” she declared. “You haven’t been to bed at all!”

“No,” he replied. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went out.”

“What, were you out in all that storm? Why, it shook the house to its foundations.”

“Yes; it blew hard in the night. It was fortunate for Martin that he anchored inside the breakwater. If not, the _Mercur_ would probably have dragged her anchor and come ashore.”

She glanced out of the window, and saw that the neighbouring roofs were lightly covered with snow.

“Now, dad,” the girl said, winding her soft arm about his neck persuasively, “I demand to know why you’ve been so upset these last two days. I’ve noticed a change in you, you know.”

“Change in me, dear!” he exclaimed, pulling himself together with an effort at once. “Why, what change is there in me? It’s only your fancy.”

“No, it isn’t. Ever since Peter Sundt arrived yesterday morning you’ve not been yourself. I’ve noticed it, so you can’t deny it!”

The old fellow’s weather-beaten face, now pale and haggard, instantly changed. He bit his lip, but tried, nevertheless, to look unconcerned. His hand trembled nervously, and the girl detected in his deep-set eyes, with their grey overhanging brows, an expression such as she had never before seen there.

Jorgen Berentsen was usually a deep-voiced, humorous, open-hearted man, whose beaming face and iron-hand grip were sufficient index to his honesty of character. But as he sat there, bending over his kneeling daughter, he presented the picture of a heart-broken, disappointed man.

“I didn’t know that Peter’s landing had had any extraordinary effect upon me, dear,” he said, with a vain attempt to smile. “Perhaps I’m not very well,” he added in faint excuse.

“You are worried about something, dad. You must tell me,” she urged.

“It’s nothing, really nothing,” he assured her, stirring in his chair. “Freyia is late. Why hasn’t she prepared breakfast, I wonder.”

“No, dad; it’s rather early. I got up because I intended to go out for a walk.”

“To meet Paul, eh, dear? Ah!” and the old man sighed as his bony fingers entangled themselves in the girl’s silken tresses.

“Why do you sigh like that, dad?” she ventured to ask, taking his other hand and raising it to her lips. “I love Paul, and I’m sure—quite sure—that he loves me.”

“I know that, my dear. I’ve seen quite enough to be aware that you’re deeply in love with one another,” remarked the old man. Then, after a pause, he added, “I only wish—”

“Wish what?”

“I only wish, my dear, that we knew a little more about Paul Grinevitch. He is always so silent concerning himself. He has told me practically nothing.”

“He is, at any rate, a gentleman, dad. And, further, he has ample means. You told me that only the other day, you know. Besides, what should I care if he hadn’t? I love him.”

“Love!” the old man echoed in a hard voice. “Ah! yes, dear child, I know—I know, alas! what love means to you both. I loved—once.”

And he sighed deeply at some recollection of long ago that stirred his memory to its depths. She was surprised, for she had never seen her father in that strange and somewhat sentimental mood before.

More than ever was she convinced that some secret existed between him and that red-faced parvenu, Peter Sundt, the man who carried with him the odour of fish into the salons of Christiania society.

“Yes, dad,” she said, raising her soft white hand and pushing his grey hair back from his brow. “You loved my dear mother—just as Paul loves me.”

The old man sat staring before him. All the natural bonhomie had fled from his face. He was hard and silent, as though his very nature had been frozen by the bitter thoughts that now obsessed him.

“Why don’t you try and induce him, my dear, to tell you more about himself,” he urged in a hoarse voice. “The fact is, Thyra, I don’t like you, my only child, marrying a man about whom I know practically nothing, and who, after all, may be only an adventurer.”

“Oh, dad! you really shouldn’t talk of Paul like that!” she exclaimed quickly, in a voice of reproach. “Within your heart you know quite well he’s not an adventurer, or you would never have given your consent to our secret engagement.”

“No, dear, I don’t say he is an adventurer. Personally, I believe him to be a very honest fellow. And certainly he would never remain here in Vardo were it not for you. Who would stay here if they could get away?”

The girl blushed slightly. She knew that her father spoke the truth.

“Then why may we not make our engagement public?” she asked. “Only yesterday Paul expressed a hope that you would soon allow us to make our love known.”

But the lines in the old sailor’s brow grew perceptibly deeper, and he only drew a long breath without answering.

“I know how lonely you will be when I am married and go south,” she said. “We shall live in Russia, I expect. Paul talks of Moscow; but I would prefer Petersburg, as in summer I could always come to Archangel by rail, and get here by the mail to see you. And perhaps after I’m married—perhaps you, dad, could get some appointment farther south, where there are sunshine and trees and flowers.”

Her father shook his head sadly. Appointments as harbour-master were few and far between. There were always hundreds of applicants. For the office he held he had been the lucky candidate out of nearly three hundred retired seafaring men.

“For myself, darling, I care nothing,” he said, looking into her grey eyes fondly. “It is your own future I am thinking of. I have lived my life, as hard a one as that of any man. What matters now if I die up here? Besides the hot summers of the south don’t suit me. I’ve lived almost my whole life here in the Arctic.”

“But though I love Paul, father, I don’t feel happy if I have, after marriage, to leave you alone,” she said quickly, her eyes fixed upon his.

“My dear, though I know so little of your lover’s position or of his past I’d—well,” he went on, with a strange catch in his voice, “I’d rather that you married him than—”

“Than what?” she asked in quick surprise.

“Oh—well, nothing, dear,” he declared. “I’m not very well this morning, that’s all.”

“Now, dad,” she cried reproachfully, “that really isn’t fair. You have something upon your mind which you won’t tell me. Peter Sundt stayed talking with you for a long time last night after I went to bed. What has he been saying to upset you?”

“Why, nothing, dear!” her father laughed faintly. “What ever caused you to imagine that? I’ve known Peter a great many years; indeed, ever since he used to live in a hut at Gamvik, behind the Sletnes, and go out fishing for cod.”

“I’m aware of that. But why would you rather see me married? Tell me the reason,” she urged.

“Well,” he laughed uneasily, “because you would, I know, be far happier with a good husband than living up in this dull place so full of the evil odours of decaying fish and so far beyond the culture and refinement amid which you were educated. I’ve always lived the rough life of the sea. With you, child, it is different. You are unfitted for this climate, its long darkness and its hardships. Surely you can see what a sacrifice it will be to me to allow your marriage, but——” and he paused. “Well, shall I tell you the truth?” he asked, staring again straight before him.

“Yes, do, dear dad!” she cried suddenly, again flinging her sinuous arms about his neck.

“Well, all to-night I’ve been thinking and wondering—wondering if I consented to your marriage with Paul at an early date, would you make your father a firm and definite promise?”

“A promise! Why, of course, dad,” she declared, kissing his wrinkled cheek. “But do you really mean that I may marry Paul soon?” she asked excitedly.

For a second the old fellow hesitated, almost as though he had not the courage to make such a promise.

“I have decided, dear Thyra,” he answered in a deep, distinct voice, “that if Paul Grinevitch is willing, he may marry you as soon as ever he wishes.”

The girl sprang up in a veritable delirium of joy.

“Oh, dad, you are really too good!” she cried, bending and kissing him again and again. Then, on reflection, a few moments later she saw that this sudden decision must be due to some unexpected circumstance.

What, she wondered, had happened to so change her father’s usual character, to cause him to remember his own love of long ago, and at the same time to induce him to allow her immediate marriage with Paul?

“I give my permission, dear, on this one condition,” he said. “That you make a solemn promise to me—that you promise——” he added hoarsely, without, however, concluding his sentence.

“Yes, dear dad; what am I to promise you?”

Again he hesitated. It struck her curiously as though he were ashamed to speak.

“I—I want you, Thyra, to promise me one thing,” he stammered. “Remember, I, your father, ask you to grant me this. After your marriage there may be some evil spoken of myself—a foul calumny spread by a blackguardly liar!” he cried, his eyes flashing suddenly. “If there is,” he said, looking straight at her with an almost imploring expression, “if there is, promise me that you will not believe one single word of it—promise me that you, my own Thyra, will not misjudge me!”

“Father,” she answered quite quietly, for she saw how deadly earnest he was, “I promise you. Of course, I would never believe any allegation against you, who have been always so good and kind to me. When you brought me back up here from Christiania, I fretted and thought you unkind. But now I know different—you were cruel to me in my own interests. But,” she added, taking both his hard hands in hers, “tell me what is the nature of this calumny—what evil do you anticipate that people may say of you?”

“It will be sufficient for you to know when you hear it!” was the old fellow’s broken reply. “As long as you close your ears to the lies of my enemy, then I do not fear. The world may seek to crush, humiliate, and ruin me with a disgraceful scandal which I am powerless to refute. Yet I am still a man—and I will face them and bear the indignity for your own dear sake, even though, at the same time, it will mean the loss of you to me.”

Then the bluff, broad-shouldered man in silence took the girl’s soft hand in his own iron grip. And thus they sat for a long time; she joyful yet full of curiosity at what her father had hinted; he hard-mouthed, grave-faced, and broken.

She felt vaguely that that moment was the crisis of her father’s life. He had an enemy who had threatened to encompass his ruin. Yet she was powerless to act, save to reassure him by repeating her promise of refusal to believe any word that might be uttered against him.

At what had her father hinted? Why, indeed, had he so suddenly and so willingly given his consent to their engagement being known, and their marriage taking place? What had caused the change in him?

These and a hundred other thoughts ran through her puzzled brain as she sat at his feet in silence, her hands in his, until they were at last interrupted by the entry of the faithful, flat-faced, bead-eyed old Lapp woman whose name, Freyia, meant in the Lapp tongue “the Goddess of Love.”

Though she had left her encampment many years to take service in Vardo, Freyia still retained her national dress, the long jacket of reindeer leather falling below her knees, secured by a leather belt and edged with gay-coloured red, yellow, and blue cloth, while her legs were encased in leather moccasins. Many a time old Jorgen had tried to induce her to adopt civilised garb, but she had always refused. A Lapp, go wherever he or she may, clings ever to the dress of his nomad clan.

Thyra, when the old woman entered to prepare breakfast, rose, and went to her own room to write a note to Paul announcing the good news, while her father turned to the window, and with hands clenched and teeth hard set, held his breath as he looked out upon the snow-covered roofs and the grey, stormy ocean beyond.

He had made that sacrifice for Thyra’s sake. For him, in the evening of his days, the future held only a painful scandal which he must now face, and which would, more than probably, bring upon him ruin as well as disgrace.

That same morning Dick Jervoise and his friend had, on rising, packed some eatables together and taken one of the big, high-prowed old boats out of the harbour and across the rough sea to the mainland, being anxious to ascertain what the bleak, treeless, inhospitable coast was like.

In a deep hollow they found a Lapp encampment—a dozen or so miserable tents of reindeer skin, with their quaintly-garbed tenants in their curious, four-cornered caps stuffed with eider-down, and many of them in heavy furs, even though it were summer. The Lapp is an extremely friendly person, therefore they spent the morning photographing, buying spoons and other articles of reindeer horn, tobacco pouches, purses of skin and other Arctic souvenirs, in turn being invited by the head-man into his tent and given the place of honour beside the ever-burning fire.

At five o’clock in the afternoon they returned to the ship to wash and make themselves respectable before having dinner, intending to go ashore to Vardo afterwards.

In the saloon they found Captain Martin in mufti, taking his cup of tea and slice of lemon.

“Well?” he asked cheerily. “And how have you fared to-day among the Lapps?”

They both declared that their outing had been full of interest, whereupon the fair-moustached, dandified man exclaimed:

“I’ve got some interesting news for you. Vardo is full of it.”

“What’s that?” inquired the doctor. “We haven’t seen a newspaper for a month.”

“Thyra Berentsen—the girl you both admire so much—is to be married.”

“Married!” gasped Jervoise.

“Yes. I’ve had orders this morning to go on to Archangel for half a cargo, after calling at Vadso and Kirkanaes. Therefore she and her father and the happy bridegroom sail with us when we go south in a fortnight’s time.”

“But who is she to marry? Surely not one of these uncouth fishermen!”

“No. He’s not at all uncouth. On the contrary, he’s a very refined, good-looking and wealthy young gentleman—a Russian from Moscow named Paul Grinevitch.”

Jervoise stood staring at the captain, his mouth wide open.

“Paul Grinevitch!” he echoed. “She has promised to marry him?”

“Yes. The announcement has set all Vardo agog. Everybody is talking of it. Why?”

The other’s teeth were clenched, his brows had contracted, and his cheeks had gone pale. Odd, standing with his back to him, did not notice the sudden change in his friend.

“Oh, for no reason!” he managed to reply. “I—well I’m greatly surprised. Nobody told me that she was engaged. That’s all.”

But as he turned away he muttered some words below his breath, though neither the captain nor the doctor heard him.

“Paul Grinevitch! So I was not mistaken after all, when I thought I caught sight of you yesterday! You are hiding here, at the end of the world, and you intend to marry Thyra Berentsen! You—_you of all men_!”

His blanched countenance grew rigid as he turned on his heel and left the narrow little saloon.