Every face brightened. Mrs. Dawes exclaimed: "Jorgen Thiis has just been asking when we intend to go; he wants to travel with us."
Mary did not turn towards Jorgen but continued: "I think the steamer sails from Havre to-morrow?"
"It does," answered her father; "but we can"t possibly be ready by that time?"
"Yes, we can!" said Mrs. Dawes. "We have this whole afternoon."
"I shall be delighted to help," said Jorgen Thiis.
Now Mary bestowed a friendly look on him, before mentioning the price which Alice had advised her to offer for the Dutch coast landscape her father wished to buy. She then went off to begin her own packing.
The four met again before the hotel dinner at half-past seven. Mary came into the room looking tired. Jorgen Thiis went up to her and said:
"I hear that you have made Frans Roy"s acquaintance, Miss Krog?"
Her father and Mrs. Dawes were listening attentively. This showed that Jorgen must have been talking with them on the subject before she entered. Every new male acquaintance she made was a source of anxiety to them. Mary coloured; she felt herself doing so, and the red deepened.
The two were watching.
"I have met him at Miss Clerc"s," replied Mary. "She and her mother spent several summers in Norway, and were intimate with his family there; they belong to the same town. Is there anything more you wish to know?"
Jorgen Thiis stood dismayed. The others stared. He said hastily: "I have just been telling your father and Mrs. Dawes that we younger officers consider Frans Roy the best man we have. So I spoke with no unfriendly intention."
"Nor did I suspect you of any. But as I myself have not mentioned the acquaintance here, I do not think that the subject ought to be introduced by strangers."
In utter consternation Jorgen stammered that, that, that he had had no other intention in doing so than to, to, to....
"I know that," Mary replied, cutting short the conversation.
They went down to dinner. At table Jorgen as a matter of course returned to the subject. It could not be allowed to drop thus. All Frans Roy"s brother officers, he said, regretted that he had exchanged into the engineers. He was a particularly able strategist. Their military exercises, both theoretical and practical, had provided him with opportunities to distinguish himself. Jorgen gave instances, but the others did not understand them. So he went on to tell anecdotes of Frans Roy as a comrade, as an officer. These were supposed to show how popular and how ready-witted he was. Mary declared that they chiefly showed how boyish he was. Thereupon Jorgen said that he had only heard the stories from others; Frans Roy was older than he.
"What do _you_ think of him?" he suddenly asked in a very innocent manner.
Mary did not answer immediately. Her father and Mrs. Dawes looked up.
"He talks a great deal too much."
Jorgen laughed. "Yes; but how can he help that--he who has so much strength?"
"Must it be exercised upon us?"
They all laughed, and the strain which had been making them uncomfortable relaxed. Krog and Mrs. Dawes felt safe, as far as Frans Roy was concerned. So did Jorgen Thiis.
At half-past eight they went upstairs again. Mary at once retired to her room, pleading fatigue. She lay and listened to Jorgen playing. Then she lay and wept.
Next evening, on the sea, wide and motionless, the faint twilight ushered in the summer night. Two pillars of smoke rose in the distance.
Except for these, the dull grey above and beneath was unbroken. Mary leaned against the rail. No one was in sight, and the thud of the engine was the only sound.
She had been listening to music downstairs, and had left the others there. An unspeakable feeling of loneliness had driven her up to this barren outlook--clouds as far as the eye could reach.
Nothing but clouds; not even the reflection of the sun which had gone down.
And was there anything more than this left of the brightness of the world from which she came? Was there not the very same emptiness in and around herself? The life of travel was now at an end; neither her father nor Mrs. Dawes could or would continue to lead it; this she understood.
At Krogskogen there was not one neighbour she cared for. In the town, half an hour"s journey off, there was not a human being to whom she was bound by any tie of intimacy. She had never given herself time to make such ties. She was at home nowhere. The life which springs from the soil of a place and unites us to everything that grows there was not hers.
Wherever she made her appearance, the conversation seemed to stop, in order that another subject, suited to her, might be introduced. The globe-trotters who wandered about with her talked of incidents of travel, of the art-galleries and the music of the towns which they were visiting--occasionally, too, of problems which pursued them, let them go where they would. But of these not one affected her personally. The conventional utterances on such subjects she knew by heart. Indeed, the whole was either a kind of practice in language, or else aimless chat to pa.s.s the time.
The homage paid her, which at times verged on worship, had begun when she was still a child and took it as fun. In course of time it had become as familiar to her as the figures of a quadrille. One incident which alarmed the whole family, a couple of incidents which were painful, had been long forgotten; the admiration she received meant nothing to her--she remained unsatisfied and lonely.
A convulsive start--and Frans Roy"s giant form suddenly appeared before her--so plain, so exact in the smallest detail, that she felt as if she could not stir because of him.
He was not like the rest. Was it this that had frightened her?
The very thought of him made her tremble. Without her willing it, Alice stood beside him, fat and sensual, with desire in her eyes.... What was the relation between these two?... A moment of darkness, one of pain, one of fury. Then Mary wept.
She heard a loud, dull roar, and turned in its direction. An ocean-steamer was bearing down on them--an apparition so unexpected and so gigantic that it took away her breath. It rose out of the sea without warning, and rushed towards them at tremendous speed, becoming larger and larger, a fire-mountain of great and small lights. With a roar it came and it went. One moment, and it was seen in the far distance.
What an impression it made on her, this life rushing past on its way from continent to continent, with its suggestion of constant, fruitful exchange of thoughts and labour! whilst she herself lay drifting in a little tub, which was rocked so violently by the waves from the world-colossus that she had to cling to the first support that offered.
She was alone again in the great void. Deserted. For was it not desertion that everything she had seen and heard in three continents--of the life of the nations, their toil and their pleasure, their art, their music--should have to be left behind? She had seen and heard; and now she was alone, in a dreary, stagnant waste.
AT HOME
The reality was something quite different.
She saw, the moment she set foot on land, that both old and young were unfeignedly happy to see her again. Every face brightened. Every one whom they met on the way up to the market-place recognised and greeted her with pleasure. She had not thought of them, but they had thought of her.
From the house on the market-place they were to go on later in the day to Krogskogen, with the coasting-steamer. In the interval many of their relations called, who all expressed great pleasure at seeing them home again at last. They told what a success Mary"s Spanish portrait had been--in their own town, in Christiania, and then on its tour with other pictures through the country. The notices--but these she had of course read? No, she had read no newspapers, except occasionally one published at the place where they were living. "Do you read no home newspapers?"
"Yes, when Father shows me them." Had not her father, had not Mrs.
Dawes, told her anything? "No." Why, she was famous now throughout the whole of Norway. For this was the third portrait of her--or was it the fourth? Anyhow it was the finest. It had been reproduced in the ill.u.s.trated newspapers; and also in an English art-magazine, the _Studio_. Did she not know that? "No." The young people here were very proud of her. They had put off their spring picnic and dance until she came home.
"You are to be feted!"
"I?"
"The picnic is to be at Marielyst. One steamer goes from here, and another comes from the places on the opposite side. Jorgen Thiis planned it all in Paris."
"Jorgen Thiis?"
"Yes. Did he not tell you about it?"
"No."
As soon as the callers left, Mary went to her father, who was unpacking some of the art treasures which were to remain in town.