Part 18 (1/2)

CHAPTER XI

A MORNING SERVICE

Mr. Fregelius replied he was as well as could be expected; that the doctor said no complications were likely to ensue, but that here upon this very bed he must lie for at least two months. ”That,” he added, ”is a sad thing to have to say to a man into whose house you have drifted like a log into a pool of the rocks.”

”It is not my house, but my father's, who is at present in France,”

answered Morris. ”But I can only say on his behalf that both you and your daughter are most welcome until you are well enough to move to the Rectory.”

”Why should I not go there at once?” interrupted Stella. ”I could come each day and see my father.”

”No, no, certainly not,” said Morris. ”How could you live alone in that great, empty house?”

”I am not afraid of being alone,” she answered, smiling; ”but let it be as you like, Mr. Monk--at any rate, until you grow tired of us, and change your mind.”

Then Mr. Fregelius told Morris what he had not yet heard--that when it became known that they had deserted Stella, leaving her to drown in the sinking s.h.i.+p, the attentions of the inhabitants of Monksland to the cowardly foreign sailors became so marked that their consul at Northwold had thought it wise to get them out of the place as quickly as possible.

While this story was in progress Stella left the room to speak to the nurse who had been engaged to look after her father at night.

Afterwards, at the request of Mr. Fregelius, Morris told the tale of his daughter's rescue. In the course of it he mentioned how he found her standing on the deck of the sinking s.h.i.+p and singing a Norse song, which she had informed him was an ancient death-dirge.

The old clergyman turned his head and sighed.

”What is the matter?” asked Morris.

”Nothing, Mr. Monk; only that song is unlucky in my family, and I hoped that she had forgotten it.”

Morris looked at him blankly.

”You don't understand--how should you? But, Mr. Monk, there are strange things and strange people in this world, and I think that my daughter Stella is one of the strangest of them. Fey like the rest--only a fey Norse woman would sing in such a moment.”

Again Morris looked at him.

”Oh, it is an old northern term, and means foreseeing, and foredoomed.

To my knowledge her grandmother, her mother, and her sister, all three of them, sang or repeated that song when in some imminent danger to their lives, and all three of them were dead within the year. The coincidence is unpleasant.”

”Surely,” said Morris, with a smile, ”you who are a clergyman, can scarcely believe in such superst.i.tion?”

”No, I am not superst.i.tious, and I don't believe in it; but the thing recalls unhappy memories. They have been death-lovers, all of them. I never heard of a case of one of that family who showed the slightest fear at the approach of death; and some have greeted it with eagerness.”

”Well,” said Morris, ”would not that mean only that their spiritual sight is a little clearer than ours, and their faith a little stronger?

Theoretically, we should all of us wish to die.”

”Quite so, yet we are human, and don't. But she is safe, thanks to you, who but for you would now be gone. My head is still weak from that blow--you must pay no attention to me. I think that I hear Stella coming; you will say nothing to her--about that song, I mean--will you?

We never talk of it in my family.”

When, still stiff and sore from his adventure in the open boat, Morris went to bed, it was clear to his mind after careful consideration that fortune had made him the host of an exceedingly strange couple. Of Mr. Fregelius he was soon able to form an estimate distinct enough, although, for aught he knew, it might be erroneous. The clergyman struck him as a person of some abilities who had been doomed to much disappointment and suffered from many sorrows. Doubtless his talents had not proved to be of a nature to advance him in the world. Probably, indeed--and here Morris's hazard was correct--he was a scholar and a bookworm without individuality, to whom fate had a.s.signed minor positions in a profession, which, however sincere his faith, he was scarcely fitted to adorn.

The work of a clergyman in a country parish if it is to succeed, should be essentially practical, and this man was not practical. Clearly, thought Morris, he was one of those who beat their wings against the bars with the common result; it was the wings that suffered, the bars only grew a trifle brighter. Then it seemed that he had lost a wife to whom he was attached, and the child who remained to him, although he loved her and clung to her, he did not altogether understand. So it came about, perhaps, that he had fallen under the curses of loneliness and continual apprehension; and in this shadow where he was doomed to walk, flourished forebodings and regrets, drawing their strength from his starved nature like fungi from a tree outgrown and fallen in the forest.

Mr. Fregelius, so thought Morris, was timid and reticent, because he dared not discover his heart, that had been so sorely trampled by Fate and Fortune. Yet he had a heart which, if he could find a confessor whom he could trust, he longed to ease in confidence. For the rest, the man's physical frame, not too robust at any time, was shattered, and with it his nerve--sudden s.h.i.+pwreck, painful accident, the fierce alternatives of hope and fear; then at last a delirium of joy at the recovery of one whom he thought dead, had done their work with him; and in this broken state some ancient, secret superst.i.tion became dominant, and, strive as he would to suppress it, even in the presence of a stranger, had burst from his lips in hints of unsubstantial folly.