British -- Norway -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Norwegians -- England -- Fiction
He had a good deal of business to see to, and the clearing off of the
debts was, of course, not without a considerable pleasure; he greatly
enjoyed, too, the hearty welcome of his old friends; but there was
always something wanting. For every street, every view, every inch of
the place was associated with his father, and, dearly as he loved
Bergen, he felt that he could not have borne to live in it again. He
seemed to find his chief happiness in lionizing Cecil, and sometimes,
when with her, the pain of the return was forgotten, and he so enjoyed
her admiration of his native city that he no longer felt the terrible
craving for his father’s presence. They went to Nestun, and wandered
about in the woods; they took Cecil to see the quaint old wooden church
from Fortun; they had a merry picnic at Fjessanger, and an early
expedition to the Bergen fish market, determined that Cecil should enjoy
that picturesque scene with the weather-beaten fishermen, the bargaining
housewives with their tin pails, the boats laden with their shining
wealth of fishes. Again and again, too, they walked up the beautiful
_fjeldveien_ to gain that wonderful bird’s-eye view over the town and
the harbor and the lakes. But perhaps no one was sorry when the visit
came to an end, and they were once more on their travels, going by sea
to Molde and thence to Naes.
It was quite late one evening that they steamed down the darkening
Romsdalsfjord. The great Romsdalshorn reared its dark head solemnly into
the calm sky, and everywhere peace seemed to reign. The steamer was
almost empty; Frithiof and Cecil stood alone at the forecastle end,
silently reveling in the exquisite view before them.
A thousand thoughts were seething in Frithiof’s mind; that first glimpse
of the Romsdalshorn had taken him back to the great crisis of his life;
in strange contrast to that peaceful scene he had a vision of a crowded
London street; in yet stranger contrast to his present happiness and
relief he once more looked into the past, and thought of his hopeless
misery, of his deadly peril, of the struggle he had gone through, of the
chance which had made him pause before the picture shop, and of his
recognition of the painting of his native mountains. Then he thought of
his first approach to Rowan Tree House on that dusky November afternoon,
and he thought of his strange dream of the beasts, and the precipice,
and the steep mountain-side, and the opening door with the Madonna and
Child framed in dazzling light. Just at that moment from behind the dark
purple mountains rose the great, golden-red moon. It was a sight never
to be forgotten, and the glow and glamour cast by it over the whole
scene was indescribable. Veblungsnaes with its busy wooden pier and its
dusky houses with here and there a light twinkling from a window; the
Romsdalshorn with its lofty peak, and the beautiful valley beyond bathed
in that sort of dim brightness and misty radiance which can be given by
nothing but the rising moon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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