Thelma
her,--she might take me for a thief."
"You look like a thief," replied Lorimer, surveying his friend's
athletic figure, clad in its loose but well-cut yachting suit of white
flannel, ornamented with silver anchor buttons, and taking a
comprehensive glance from the easy pose of the fine head and handsome
face, down to the trim foot with the high and well-arched instep, "very
much like a thief? I wonder I haven't noticed it before. Any London
policeman would arrest you on the mere fact of your suspicious
appearance."
Errington laughed. "Well, my boy, whatever my looks may testify, I am at
this moment an undoubted trespasser on private property,--and so are you
for that matter. What shall we do?"
"Find the front door and ring the bell," suggested George promptly. "Say
we are benighted travellers and have lost our way. The _bonde_ can but
flay us. The operation, I believe, is painful, but it cannot last long."
"George, you are incorrigible! Suppose we go back and try the other side
of this pine-wood? That might lead us to the front of the house."
"I don't see why we shouldn't walk coolly past that window," said
Lorimer. "If any observation is made by the fair 'Marguerite' yonder, we
can boldly say we have come to see the _bonde_."
Unconsciously they had both raised their voices a little during the
latter part of their hasty dialogue, and at the instant when Lorimer
uttered the last words, a heavy hand was laid on each of their
shoulders,--a hand that turned them round forcibly away from the window
they had been gazing at, and a deep, resonant voice addressed them.
"The _bonde_? Truly, young men, you need seek no further,--I am Olaf
Gueldmar!"
Had he said, "I am an Emperor!" he could not have spoken with more
pride.
Errington and his friend were for a moment speechless,--partly from
displeasure at the summary manner in which they had been seized and
twisted round like young uprooted saplings, and partly from surprise and
involuntary admiration for the personage who had treated them with such
scant courtesy. They saw before them a man somewhat above the middle
height, who might have served an aspiring sculptor as a perfect model
for a chieftain of old Gaul, or a dauntless Viking. His frame was firmly
and powerfully built, and seemed to be exceptionally strong and
muscular; yet an air of almost courtly grace pervaded his movements,
making each attitude he assumed more or less picturesque. He was
broad-shouldered and deep-chested; his face was full and healthily
colored, while his head was truly magnificent. Well-poised and shapely,
it indicated power, will, and wisdom; and was furthermore adorned by a
rough, thick mass of snow-white hair that shone in the sunlight like
spun silver. His beard was short and curly, trimmed after the fashion of
the warriors of old Rome; and, from under his fierce, fuzzy, grey
eyebrows, a pair of sentinel eyes, that were keen, clear, and bold as an
eagle's, looked out with a watchful steadiness--steadiness that like the
sharp edge of a diamond, seemed warranted to cut through the brittle
glass of a lie. Judging by his outward appearance, his age might have
been guessed at as between fifty-eight and sixty, but he was, in truth,
seventy-two, and more strong, active, and daring than many another man
whose years are not counted past the thirties. He was curiously attired,
after something of the fashion of the Highlander, and something yet more
of the ancient Greek, in a tunic, vest, and loose jacket all made of
reindeer skin, thickly embroidered with curious designs worked in coarse
thread and colored beads; while thrown carelessly over his shoulders and
knotted at his waist, was a broad scarf of white woollen stuff, or
_wadmel_, very soft-looking and warm. In his belt he carried a
formidable hunting-knife, and as he faced the two intruders on his
ground, he rested one hand lightly yet suggestively on a weighty staff
of pine, which was notched all over with quaint letters and figures, and
terminated in a curved handle at the top. He waited for the young men to
speak, and finding they remained silent, he glanced at them half angrily
and again repeated his words--
"I am the _bonde_,--Olaf Gueldmar. Speak your business and take your
departure; my time is brief!"
Lorimer looked up with his usual nonchalance,--a faint smile playing
about his lips. He saw at once that the old farmer was not a man to be
trifled with, and he raised his cap with a ready grace as he spoke.
"Fact is," he said frankly, "we've no business here at all--not the
least in the world. We are perfectly aware of it! We are trespassers,
and we know it. Pray don't be hard on us, Mr.--Mr. Gueldmar!"
The _bonde_ glanced him over with a quick lightening of the eyes, and
the suspicion of a smile in the depths of his curly beard. He turned to
Errington.
"Is this true? You came here on purpose, knowing the ground was private
property?"
Errington, in his turn, lifted his cap from his clustering brown curls
with that serene and stately court manner which was to him second
nature.
"We did," he confessed, quietly following Lorimer's cue, and seeing also
that it was best to be straightforward. "We heard you spoken of in
Bosekop, and we came to see if you would permit us the honor of your
acquaintance."
The old man struck his pine-staff violently into the ground, and his
face flushed wrathfully.
"Bosekop!" he exclaimed. "Talk to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You
shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news.
Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they
that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the
grindstone, or to wait, hungry and humble, for the refuse of the food
left from my table!"
He spoke with extraordinary heat and passion,--it was evidently
necessary to soothe him. Lorimer took a covert glance backward over his
shoulder towards the lattice window, and saw that the white figure at
the spinning-wheel had disappeared.
"My dear Mr. Gueldmar," he then said with polite fervor, "I assure you I
think the Bosekop folk by no means deserve to sharpen your sword on the
grindstone, or to enjoy the remains of your dinner! Myself, I despise
them! My friend here, Sir Philip Errington, despises them--don't you,
Phil?"
Errington nodded demurely.
"What my friend said just now is perfectly true," continued Lorimer. "We
desire the honor of your acquaintance,--it will charm and delight us
above all things!"
And his face beamed with a candid, winning, boyish smile, which was very
captivating in its own way, and which certainly had its effect on the
old _bonde_, for his tone softened, though he said gravely--
"My acquaintance, young men, is never sought by any. Those who are wise,
keep away from me. I love not strangers, it is best you should know it.
I freely pardon your trespass; take your leave, and go in peace."
The two friends exchanged disconsolate looks. There really seemed
nothing for it, but to obey this unpleasing command. Errington made one
more venture.
"May I hope, Mr. Gueldmar," he said with persuasive courtesy, "that you
will break through your apparent rule of seclusion for once and visit me
on board my yacht? You have no doubt seen her--the _Eulalie_--she lies
at anchor in the Fjord."
The _bonde_ looked him straight in the eyes. "I have seen her. A fair
toy vessel to amuse an idle young man's leisure! You are he that in that
fool's hole of a Bosekop, is known as the 'rich Englishman,'--an idle
trifler with time,--an aimless wanderer from those dull shores where
they eat gold till they die of surfeit! I have heard of you,--a mushroom
knight, a fungus of nobility,--an ephemeral growth on a grand decaying
old tree, whose roots lie buried in the annals of a far forgotten past."
The rich, deep voice of the old man quivered as he spoke, and a shadow
of melancholy flitted across his brow. Errington listened with unruffled
patience. He heard himself, his pleasures, his wealth, his rank, thus
made light of, without the least offense. He met the steady gaze of the
_bonde_ quietly, and slightly bent his head as though in deference to
his remarks.
"You are quite right," he said simply. "We modern men are but pigmies
compared with the giants of old time. Royal blood itself is tainted
nowadays. But, for myself, I attach no importance to the mere
appurtenances of life,--the baggage that accompanies one on that brief
journey. Life itself is quite enough for me."
"And for me too," averred Lorimer, delighted that his friend had taken
the old farmer's scornful observations so good-naturedly. "But, do you
know, Mr. Gueldmar, you are making life unpleasant for us just now, by
turning us out? The conversation is becoming interesting! Why not
prolong it? We have no friends in Bosekop, and we are to anchor here for
some days. Surely you will allow us to come and see you again?"
Olaf Gueldmar was silent. He advanced a step nearer, and studied them
both with such earnest and searching scrutiny, that as they remembered
the real attraction that had drawn them thither, the conscious blood
mounted to their faces, flushing Errington's forehead to the very roots
of his curly brown hair. Still the old man gazed as though he sought to
read their very souls. He muttered something to himself in Norwegian,
and, finally, to their utter astonishment, he drew his hunting-knife
from its sheath, and with a rapid, wild gesture, threw it on the ground
and placed his foot upon it.
"Be it so!" he said briefly. "I cover the blade! You are men; like men
you speak truth. As such, I receive you! Had you told me a lie
concerning your coming here,--had you made pretense of having lost your
way, or other such shifty evasion, your path would never have again
crossed mine. As it is,--welcome!"
And he held out his hand with a sort of royal dignity, still resting one
foot on the fallen weapon. The young men, struck by his action and
gratified by his change of manner and the genial expression that now
softened his rugged features, were quick to respond to his friendly
greeting, and the _bonde_, picking up and re-sheathing his hunting-knife
as if he had done nothing at all out of the common, motioned them
towards the very window on which their eyes had been so long and so
ardently fixed.
"Come!" he said. "You must drain a cup of wine with me before you leave.
Your unguided footsteps led you by the wrong path,--I saw your boat
moored to my pier, and wondered who had been venturesome enough to
trample through my woodland. I might have guessed that only a couple of
idle boys like yourselves, knowing no better, would have pushed their
way to a spot that all worthy dwellers in Bosekop, and all true
followers of the Lutheran devilry, avoid as though the plague were
settled in it."
And the old man laughed, a splendid, mellow laugh, with the ring of true
jollity in it,--a laugh that was infectious, for Errington and Lorimer
joined in it heartily without precisely knowing why. Lorimer, however,
thought it seemly to protest against the appellation "idle boys."
"What do you take us for, sir?" he said with lazy good-nature. "I carry
upon my shoulders the sorrowful burden of twenty-six years,--Philip,
there, is painfully conscious of being thirty,--may we not therefore
dispute the word 'boys' as being derogatory to our dignity? You called
us 'men' a while ago,--remember that!"
Olaf Gueldmar laughed again. His suspicious gravity had entirely
disappeared, leaving his face a beaming mirror of beneficence and
good-humor.
"So you _are_ men," he said cheerily, "men in the bud, like leaves on a
tree. But you seem boys to a tough old stump of humanity such as I am.
That is my way,--my child Thelma, though they tell me she is a woman