As Preston Askevold had feared, Frithiof bore the troubles much less easily. He was without Sigrid’s sweetness of nature, without her patience, and the little touch of philosophic matter-of-factness which helped her to endure. He was far more sensitive too, and was terribly handicapped by the bitterness which was the almost inevitable result of his treatment by Blanche Morgan, a bitterness which stirred him up into a sort of contemptuous hatred of both God and man. Sigrid, with her quiet common sense, her rarely expressed but very real faith, struggled on through the winter and the spring, and in the process managed to grow and develop; but Frithiof, in his desolate London lodgings, with his sore heart and rebellious intellect, grew daily more hard and morose. Had it not been for the Bonifaces he must have gone altogether to the bad, but the days which he spent every now and then in that quiet, simple household, where kindness reigned supreme, saved him from utter ruin. For always through the darkest part of every life there runs, though we may sometimes fail to see it, this “golden thread of love,” so that even the worst man on earth is not wholly cut off from God, since He will, by some means or other, eternally try to draw him out of death into life. We are astounded now and then to read that some cold-blooded murderer, some man guilty of a hideous crime, will ask in his last moments to see a child who loved him devotedly, and whom he also loved. We are astonished just because we do not understand the untiring heart of the All-Father who in His goodness often gives to the vilest sinner the love of a pure-hearted woman or child. So true is the beautiful old Latin saying, long in the world but little believed, “Mergere nos patitur, sed non submergere, Christus” (Christ lets us sink may be, but not drown).

Just at this time there was only one thing on which Frithiof found any satisfaction, and that was in the little store of money which by slow degrees he was able to place in the savings bank. In what way it could ever grow into a sum large enough to pay his father’s creditors he did not trouble himself to think, but week by week it did increase, and with this one aim in life he struggled on, working early and late, and living on an amount of food which could have horrified an Englishman. Luckily he had discovered a place in Oxford Street where he could get a good dinner every day for sixpence, but this was practically his only meal, and after some months the scanty fare began to tell upon him, so that even the Miss Turnours noticed that something was wrong.

“That young man looks to me underfed,” said Miss Caroline one day. “I met him on the stairs just now, and he seems to me to have grown paler and thinner. What does he have for breakfast, Charlotte? Does he eat as well as the other lodgers?”

“Dear me, no,” said Miss Charlotte. “It’s my belief that he eats nothing at all but ship’s biscuits. There’s a tin of them up in his room, and a tin of cocoa, which he makes for himself. All I ever take him is a jug of boiling water night and morning!”

“Poor fellow!” said Miss Caroline, sighing a little as she plaited some lace which must have been washed a hundred times into her dress.

A delicate carefulness in these little details of dress distinguished the three ladies—they had inherited it with the spelling of their name and other tokens of good breeding.

“I feel sorry for him,” she added. “He always bows very politely when I meet him, and he is remarkably good-looking, though with a disagreeable expression.”

“When one is hungry one seldom looks agreeable,” said Miss Charlotte. “I wish I had noticed him before,” and she remembered, with a little pang of remorse, that she had more than once preached to him about his soul, while all the time she had been too dreamy and unobservant to see what was really wrong with him.

“Suppose,” she said timidly, “suppose I were to take him a little of the stewed American beef we shall have for supper.”

“Send it up by the girl,” said Miss Turnour, “she is still in the kitchen. Don’t take it yourself—it would be awkward for both of you.”

So Miss Charlotte meekly obeyed, and sent up by the shabby servant-girl a most savory little supper. Unluckily the girl was a pert cockney, and her loud, abrupt knock at the door in itself irritated Frithiof.

“Come in,” he said, in a surly tone.

“Look here,” said the girl, “here’s something to put you in a better temper. Missus’s compliments, and she begs you’ll accept it,” and she thrust the tray at him with a derisive grin.

“Have the goodness to take that down again,” said Frithiof, in a fit of unreasoning anger. “I’ll not be treated like your mistress’ pet dog.”

Something in his manner cowed the girl. She beat a hasty retreat, and was planning how she could manage to eat the despised supper herself, when at the foot of the stairs she met Miss Charlotte, and her project was nipped in the bud.

“It aint no use, miss, ’e wont touch it,” she explained; “’e was as angry as could be, and says ’e, ‘Take it away. I’ll not be treated like your mistress’ pet dog,’ says ’e. So, bein’ frightened, I ran downstairs agen.”

Miss Charlotte looked troubled, and later on, when as usual she took up the jug of hot water, she felt nervous and uncomfortable, and her knock was more timid than ever. However, she had scarcely set down the jug on the floor when there came sounds of hasty footsteps in the room, and Frithiof flung open the door.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “You meant to be kind, I’m sure, but the girl was rude, and I lost my temper. I ask your forgiveness.”

There were both pathetic and comic elements in the little scene; the meek Miss Charlotte stood trembling as if she had seen a ghost, gazing up at the tall Norseman who, in the hurry of the moment, had forgotten to remove the wet towel which, in common with most night-workers, he was in the habit of tying round his forehead.

Miss Charlotte stooped to pick up the jug.

“I am so sorry the girl was rude,” she said. “I wish I had brought it myself. You see, it was in this way; we all thought you looking so poorly, and we were having the beef for supper and we thought perhaps you might fancy some, and—and—”

“It was very good of you,” he said, touched, in spite of himself, by the kindness. “I regret what I said, but you must make allowance for a bad-tempered man with a splitting headache.”

“Is that the reason you tie it up?” asked Miss Charlotte.

He laughed and pulled off the towel, passing his hand over the mass of thick light hair which it had disordered.

“It keeps it cooler,” he said, “and I can get through more work.”

She glanced at the table, and saw that it was covered with papers and books.

“Are you wise to do so much work after being busy all day?” she said. “It seems to me that you are not looking well.”

“It is nothing but headache,” he said. “And the work is the only pleasure I have in the world.”

“I was afraid from your looks that you had a hard life,” she said hesitatingly.

“It is not hard outwardly. As far as work goes it is easy enough, but there is a deadly monotony about it.”

“Ah! if only”—she began.

He interrupted her.

“I know quite well what you are going to say—you are going to recommend me to attend one of those religious meetings where people get so full of a delightful excitement. Believe me, they would not have the slightest effect on me. And yet, if you wish it, I will go. It shall be my sign of penitence for my rudeness just now.”

Miss Charlotte could not make out whether his smile was sarcastic or genuine. However, she took him at his word, and the next evening carried him off to a big brightly lighted hall, to a revivalist meeting, from which she hoped great things.

It was a hot June evening. He came there tired with the long day’s work, and his head felt dull and heavy. Merely out of politeness to his companion he tried to take some sort of interest in what went on, stifled his inclination to laugh now and then, and watched the proceedings attentively, though wearily enough. In front of him rose a large platform with tiers of seats one above the other. The men and women seated there had bright-looking faces. Some looked self-conscious and self-satisfied, several of the women seemed overwrought and hysterical, but others had a genuine look of content which impressed him. Down below was a curiously heterogeneous collection of instruments—cornets, drums, tambourines, trumpets, and pipes. A hymn was given out, followed by a chorus; the words were solemn, but the tune was the reverse; still it seemed to please the audience, who sung three choruses to each verse, the first loud, the second louder, the third a perfect frenzy of sound, the drums thundering, the tambourines dashing about wildly, the pipes and cornets at their shrillest, and every one present singing or shouting with all his might. It took him some time to recover from the appalling noise, and meantime a woman was praying. He did not much attend to what she said, but the audience seemed to agree with her, for every minute or two there was a chorus of fervent “Amens,” which rolled through the hall like distant thunder. After that the young man who conducted the meeting read a story out of the Bible, and spoke well and with a sort of simple directness. There was very little in what he said, but he meant every word of it. It might have been summed up in three sentences: “There is only one way of being happy. I have tried it and have found it answer. All you who haven’t tried it begin at once.”

But the words which meant much to him conveyed nothing to Frithiof. He listened, and wondered how a man of his own age could possibly get up and say such things. What was it he had found? How had he found it? If the speaker had shown the least sign of vanity his words would have been utterly powerless; but his quiet positiveness impressed people, and it was apparent to every one that he believed in a strength which was not his own. There followed much that seemed to Frithiof monotonous and undesirable; about thirty people on the platform, one after another, got up and spoke a few words, which invariably began with “I thank the Lord I was saved on such and such a night.” He wondered and wondered what the phrase meant to them, and revolved in his mind all the theological dogmas he had ever heard of. Suddenly he was startled to find that some one was addressing him, a hymn was being sung, and there was a good deal of movement in the hall; people went and came, and an elderly woman had stepped forward and taken a place beside him.

“Brother,” she said to him, “are you saved?”

“Madame,” he replied coldly, “I have not the slightest idea.”

“Oh, then,” she said, with a little gesture that reminded him of Miss Charlotte, “let me beg you to come at once to Christ.”

“Madame,” he said, still in his coldly polite voice, “you must really excuse me, but I do not know what you mean.”

She was so much surprised and puzzled by both words and manner that she hesitated what to reply; and Frithiof, who hated being questioned, took his hat from the bench, and bowing formally to her, left the hall. In the street he was joined by Miss Charlotte.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I am so sorry you said that. You will have made that poor woman so terribly unhappy.”

“It is all her own fault,” said Frithiof. “Why did she come meddling with my private affairs? If her belief was real she would have been able to explain it in a rational way, instead of using phrases which are just empty words.”

“You didn’t leave her time to explain. And as to her belief being real, do you think, if it were not real, that little, frail woman would have had courage to go twice to prison for speaking in the streets? Do you think she would have been able to convert the most abandoned thieves, and induce them to make restitution, paying in week by week what they could earn to replace what they had stolen?”

“Does she do that? Then I respect her. When you see her again please apologize for my abruptness, and tell her that her form of religion is too noisy for my head and too illogical for my mind.”

They walked home in silence, Miss Charlotte grieving over the hopeless failure of the meeting to achieve what she desired. She had not yet learned that different natures need different kinds of food, and that to expect Frithiof to swallow the teachings which exactly suited certain minds was about as sensible as to feed a baby with Thorley’s Food for Cattle. However, there never yet was an honest attempt to do good which really failed, though the vast majority fail apparently. It was impossible that the revivalists’ teaching could ever be accepted by the Norseman; but their ardent devotion, their practical, aggressive lives, impressed him not a little, and threw a somewhat disagreeable light over his own selfishness. Partly owing to this, partly from physical causes, he felt bitterly out of heart with himself for the next few weeks. In truth he was thoroughly out of health, and he had not the only power which can hold irritability in check—the strong restraint of love. Except a genuine liking for the Bonifaces, he had nothing to take him out of himself, and he was quite ready to return with interest the dislike which the other men in the shop felt for him, first on account of his foreign birth, but chiefly because of his proud manner and hasty temper. Sometimes he felt that he could bear the life no longer; and at times, out of his very wretchedness, there sprung up in him a vague pity for those who were in his own position. As he stood there behind the counter he would say to himself, “There are thousands and thousands in this city alone who have day after day to endure this horrible monotony, to serve the customers who are rude, and the customers who are civil, the hurried ones who are all impatience, the tiresome ones who dawdle, the bores, who give you as much trouble as they can, often for nothing. One day follows another eternally in the same dull round. I am a hundred times better off than most—there are no hurried meals here, no fines, no unfairness—and yet what drudgery it is!”

And as he glanced out at the sunny street and heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the road, a wild longing used to seize him for the freedom and variety of his life in Norway, and the old fierce rebellion against his fate woke once more in his heart, and made him ready to fly into a rage on the smallest provocation.

One day he was sent for to Mr. Boniface’s private room; he was quite well aware that his manner, even to Roy himself, whom he liked, had been disagreeable in the extreme, and the thought crossed his mind that he was going to receive notice to leave.

Mr. Boniface was sitting at his writing-table, the sunlight fell on his quiet, refined face, lighted up his white hair and trim beard, and made his kindly gray eyes brighter than ever. “I wanted a few words with you, Falck,” he said. “Sit down. It seems to me that you have not been looking well lately, and I thought perhaps you had better take your holiday at once instead of the third week in August. I have spoken to Darnell, and he would be willing to give you his turn and take the later time. What do you think?”

“You are very good, sir,” said Frithiof, “but I shall do very well with the August holiday, and, as a matter of fact, it will only mean that I shall do more translating.”

“Would you not do well to go home? Come, think of it, I would give you three weeks if you want to go to Bergen.”

Frithiof felt a choking sensation in his throat, because it was of the old life that he had been dreaming all the morning with a restless, miserable craving.

“Thank you,” he said, with an effort, “but I can not go back to Norway.”

“Now, tell me candidly, Falck, is it the question of expense that hinders you?” said Mr. Boniface. “Because if it is merely that, I would gladly lend you the money. You must remember that you have had a great deal to bear lately, and I think you ought to give yourself a good rest.”

“Thank you,” replied Frithiof, “but it is not exactly the expense. I have money enough in hand to pay for my passage, but I have made up my mind not to go back till I can clear off the last of the debts of—of our firm,” he concluded, with a slight quiver in his voice.

“It is a noble resolution,” said Mr. Boniface, “and I would not for a moment discourage you. Still you must remember that it is a great undertaking, and that without good health you can never hope for success. I don’t think you get enough exercise. Now, why don’t you join our cricket club?”

“I don’t play,” said Frithiof. “In Norway we are not great at those games, or indeed at any kind of exercise for the mere sake of exercise. That is an idea that one only finds among Englishmen.”

“Possibly; but living in our climate you would do well to follow our habits. Come, let me persuade you to join the club. You look to me as if you needed greater variety.”

“I will think about it for next year; but just now I have work for Herr Sivertsen on hand which I can’t put aside,” said Frithiof.

“Well, then, things must go on as they are for the present,” said Mr. Boniface; “but at least you can bring your translating down to Rowan Tree House, and spend your holiday with us.”

“You are very kind,” said Frithiof, the boyish expression returning to his face just for a minute. “I shall be only too delighted.”

And the interview seemed somehow to have done him good, for during the next few days he was less irritable, and found his work in consequence less irksome.