When Love Calls — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Double Narrative, Two Voices

The book is structured as two linked stories, “Her Story” and “His Story,” each narrated by a different character. The first is told by Bab, a young woman whose voice is immediate, self-deprecating, and observant. She describes her companion Clare as “greedy” and herself as “short-coated,” and she resents the implication that she might need to grow an inch. The second story shifts to a male narrator, whose tone is more measured and who recounts a strange encounter with a servant who believes invisible Van Dyck portraits hang on a blank wall.

This structural choice—two perspectives on what appears to be the same event or theme—invites comparison between the narrators’ perceptions. The catalog subject “Short stories, English” suggests these may be independent tales, but the shared title and the phrase “When Love Calls” in both sections imply a connection. The excerpts do not reveal how the stories relate, but the shift in voice and setting (from Norwegian riverbank to English country house) creates a deliberate contrast in tone and focus.

The Strange Invitation and the Invisible Portraits

In “His Story,” the male narrator is drawn into a peculiar situation: a dignified old servant, after overhearing a conversation about a snob, invites him to view paintings by Van Dyck and Rubens. The narrator follows him into a grand, empty dining room, where the servant points to a blank wall and describes a portrait of “the second Lord Wetherby” in precise detail. The narrator is “lost in astonishment; amazed, almost appalled,” realizing the old man must be mad—yet the servant’s manner is so “graphic” and “crisp” that the narrator almost sees the picture himself.

This episode is the most striking in the excerpts, blending psychological unease with a subtle commentary on class and perception. The servant’s dignity and his insistence on the paintings’ value contrast with the bare hall and the “gaunt stand” with only one umbrella. The narrator’s reaction—a mix of pity and fascination—suggests a story more concerned with interior states than with plot. The catalog subject “Psychological & Social Fiction” fits this scene well, as it explores how belief and social performance shape reality.

Setting as Character: Norway and the English House

The excerpts devote considerable attention to physical settings, using them to evoke mood and character. In “Her Story,” the Norwegian landscape is described with specificity: the “thick moss” in “dazzling orange and white and crimson,” the river that “gliding and swishing, and swirling faster and faster,” and the cloud-berries that stain the girls’ faces. This is not a generic pastoral; it is a place with texture and taste, where the narrator’s irritation at her rough clothes is set against the freedom of the mountain air.

In contrast, “His Story” takes place in a “spacious, but sparely furnished” hall, with a “cold look” and a “gaunt stand.” The dining room is empty of furniture, and the only hint of comfort is a small room with “dainty prints and water-colors” that the narrator dismisses as common. The setting mirrors the servant’s delusion: a house that once held valuable art now holds only memory. The catalog subjects “England -- Fiction” and “France -- Fiction” are only partially borne out—the English setting is vivid, but France does not appear in these excerpts.

Readers approaching When Love Calls should attend to the way Weyman uses voice and setting to create two distinct but possibly intersecting worlds. The Norwegian opening is brisk and sensory, while the English episode is eerie and restrained. The relationship between the two stories is not explained in the excerpts, so part of the reading experience will be discovering how—or whether—they connect. The catalog labels it “short stories,” but the shared title and the theme of love calling suggest a unity that the reader must piece together.

I remember shelving When Love Calls beside my desk last autumn, tracing that quiet ache between its Norwegian shadows and English parlours—how perception makes its own frail room. It reminded me, somehow, of another volume I’ve kept near my chair, softer but kin: Rich Relatives — Key Ideas to Explore. Both whisper about belonging that never quite settles, about doors ajar you can’t close.