Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/297

Rh "No, child, no! Not to God, but to America."

Three days later a blond giant, carrying in his arms a limp and apparently lifeless form, made a sensation in the streets of London, and three weeks later he repeated the sensation in the streets of New York.

After a month of futile inquiry, Narve Tangen got a position as clerk with Mr. Tulstrup, a Norwegian merchant who dealt in fish-products which he imported from Norway. Long experience had made Narve a connoisseur in cod-liver and whale oils, and enabled him to detect the slightest adulteration. He thus made himself valuable to his employer and gained a comfortable livelihood. But for all that he was not happy. He felt limp and depressed, and all his former energy seemed to have deserted him. It was only by a violent effort, and by the thought of Paul's dependence upon him, that he could arouse himself to attend to his duties. The terrible uproar of Broadway bewildered and oppressed him, and he yearned with a passionate regret for the silence of the great Arctic solitudes. The dear familiar sights amid which he had grown up haunted his thoughts and made him pine like a child to return to them. But his homeward way seemed forever to be cut off, and he would be obliged to spend his whole life in this strange and bewildering land, amid these alien sights and sounds.

There was but one consolation in these sorrows: Paul was gaining strength. With every day his pleasure in life revived: he began in a cautious way to study English, and Mr. Tulstrup's daughter, Miss Ida, who had become interested in the strange career of the brothers, came every morning and talked with him for a couple of hours. Paul, who in spite of his eighteen years was yet a child in mind, identified her immediately with the noble and lovely Flor de Habana, his favorite among his cigar-box heroines. The jewelled rings on her fingers, the laces and bright ribbons on her dress, the ostrich-feathers on her hat, filled him with wonder and delight. She appeared to him (though she was in no wise extravagantly apparelled) like a figure out of the "Arabian Nights,"—like a heaven-sent realization of the dreams he had dreamed during his long solitude and misery. In Vardoe he had only seen women dressed in wadmal and coarse homespun; and this exquisite creature, with her sweet smile, her silken hair, and her soft hands, seemed scarcely to belong. to the same species. If he could only have walked with her through the palm-groves with which his fancy surrounded the city, his cup of happiness would have been full. The gorgeous roses she brought him grew, for aught he knew, on palm-