Thelma
your country I envy! I would give anything to prove him a Norwegian. By
Valhalla! had he but been one of the Bards of Odin, the world might have
followed the grand old creed still! If anything could ever persuade me
to be a Christian, it would be the fact that Shakespeare was one. If
England's name is rendered imperishable, it will be through the fame of
Shakespeare alone,--just as we have a kind of tenderness for degraded
modern Greece, because of Homer. Ay, ay! countries and nations are
worthless enough; it is only the great names of heroes that endure, to
teach the lesson that is never learned sufficiently,--namely, that man
and man alone is fitted to grasp the prize of immortality."
"Ye believe in immortality?" inquired Macfarlane seriously.
Gueldmar's keen eyes lighted on him with fiery impetuousness.
"Believe in it? I possess it! How can it be taken from me? As well make
a bird without wings, a tree without sap, an ocean without depths, as
expect to find a man without an immortal soul! What a question to ask?
Do _you_ not possess heaven's gift? and why should not I?"
"No offense," said Macfarlane, secretly astonished at the old _bonde's_
fervor,--for had not he, though himself intending to become a devout
minister of the Word,--had not he now and then felt a creeping doubt as
to whether, after all, there was any truth in the doctrine of another
life than this one. "I only thocht ye might have perhaps questioned the
probabeelity o't, in your own mind?"
"I never question Divine authority," replied Olaf Gueldmar, "I pity those
that do!"
"And this Divine authority?" said Duprez suddenly with a delicate
sarcastic smile, "how and where do you perceive it?"
"In the very Law that compels me to exist, young sir," said
Gueldmar,--"in the mysteries of the universe about me,--the glory of the
heavens,--the wonders of the sea! You have perhaps lived in cities all
your life, and your mind is cramped a bit. No wonder, . . . you can
hardly see the stars above the roofs of a wilderness of houses. Cities
are men's work,--the gods have never had a finger in the building of
them. Dwelling in them, I suppose you cannot help forgetting Divine
authority altogether; but here,--here among the mountains, you would
soon remember it! You should live here,--it would make a man of you!"
"And you do not consider me a man?" inquired Duprez with imperturbable
good-humor.
Gueldmar laughed. "Well, not quite!" he admitted candidly, "there's not
enough muscle about you. I confess I like to see strong fellows--fellows
fit to rule the planet on which they are placed. That's my whim!--but
you're a neat little chap enough, and I dare say you can hold your own!"
And his eyes twinkled good-temperedly as he filled himself another glass
of his host's fine Burgundy, and drank it off, while Duprez, with a
half-plaintive, half-comical shrug of resignation to Gueldmar's verdict
on his personal appearance, asked Thelma if she would favor them with a
song. She rose from her seat instantly, without any affected hesitation,
and went to the piano. She had a delicate touch, and accompanied herself
with great taste,--but her voice, full, penetrating, rich and true,--was
one of the purest and most sympathetic ever possessed by woman, and its
freshness was unspoilt by any of the varied "systems" of torture
invented by singing-masters for the ingenious destruction of the
delicate vocal organ. She sang a Norwegian love-song in the original
tongue, which might be roughly translated as follows:--
"Lovest thou me for my beauty's sake?
Love me not then!
Love the victorious, glittering Sun,
The fadeless, deathless, marvellous One!"
"Lovest thou me for my youth's sake?
Love me not then!
Love the triumphant, unperishing Spring,
Who every year new charms doth bring!"
"Lovest thou me for treasure's sake?
Oh, love me not then!
Love the deep, the wonderful Sea,
Its jewels are worthier love than me!"
"Lovest thou me for Love's own sake?
Ah sweet, then love me!
More than the Sun and the Spring and the Sea,
Is the faithful heart I will yield to thee!"
A silence greeted the close of her song. Though the young men were
ignorant of the meaning of the words still old Gueldmar translated them
for their benefit, they could feel the intensity of the passion
vibrating through her ringing tones,--and Errington sighed
involuntarily. She heard the sigh, and turned round on the music-stool
laughing.
"Are you so tired, or sad, or what is it?" she asked merrily. "It is too
melancholy a tune? And I was foolish to sing it,--because you cannot
understand the meaning of it. It is all about love,--and of course love
is always sorrowful."
"Always?" asked Lorimer, with a half-smile.
"I do not know," she said frankly, with a pretty deprecatory gesture of
her hands,--"but all books say so! It must be a great pain, and also a
great happiness. Let me think what I can sing to you now,--but perhaps
you will yourself sing?"
"Not one of us have a voice, Miss Gueldmar," said Errington. "I used to
think I had, but Lorimer discouraged my efforts."
"Men shouldn't sing," observed Lorimer; "if they only knew how awfully
ridiculous they look, standing up in dress-coats and white ties, pouring
forth inane love-ditties that nobody wants to hear, they wouldn't do it.
Only a woman looks pretty while singing."
"Ah, that is very nice!" said Thelma, with a demure smile. "Then I am
agreeable to you when I sing?"
Agreeable? This was far too tame a word--they all rose from the table
and came towards her, with many assurances of their delight and
admiration; but she put all their compliments aside with a little
gesture that was both incredulous and peremptory.
"You must not say so many things in praise of me," she said, with a
swift upward glance at Errington, where he leaned on the piano regarding
her. "It is nothing to be able to sing. It is only like the birds, but
we cannot understand the words they say, just as you cannot understand
Norwegian. Listen,--here is a little ballad you will all know," and she
played a soft prelude, while her voice, subdued to a plaintive murmur,
rippled out in the dainty verses of Sainte-Beuve--
"Sur ma lyre, l'autre fois
Dans un bois,
Ma main preludait a peine;
Une colombe descend
En passant,
Blanche sur le luth d'ebene"
"Mais au lieu d'accords touchants,
De doux chants,
La colombe gemissante
Me demande par pitie
Sa moitie
Sa moitie loin d'elle absente!"
She sang this seriously and sweetly till she came to the last three
lines, when, catching Errington's earnest gaze, her voice quivered and
her cheeks flushed. She rose from the piano as soon as she had finished,
and said to the _bonde_, who had been watching her with proud and
gratified looks--
"It is growing late, father. We must say good-bye to our friends and
return home."
"Not yet!" eagerly implored Sir Philip. "Come up on deck,--we will have
coffee there, and afterwards you shall leave us when you will."
Gueldmar acquiesced in this arrangement, before his daughter had time to
raise any objection, and they all went on deck, where a comfortable
lounging chair was placed for Thelma, facing the most gorgeous portion
of the glowing sky, which on this evening was like a moving mass of
molten gold, split asunder here and there by angry ragged-looking rifts
of crimson. The young men grouped themselves together at the prow of the
vessel in order to smoke their cigars without annoyance to Thelma. Old
Gueldmar did not smoke, but he talked,--and Errington after seeing them
all fairly absorbed in an argument on the best methods of spearing
salmon, moved quietly away to where the girl was sitting, her great
pensive eyes fixed on the burning splendors of the heavens.
"Are you warm enough there?" he asked, and there was an unconscious
tenderness in his voice as he asked the question, "or shall I fetch you
a wrap?"
She smiled. "I have my hood," she said. "It is the warmest thing I ever
wear, except, of course, in winter."
Philip looked at the hood as she drew it more closely over her head, and
thought that surely no more becoming article of apparel ever was
designed for woman's wear. He had never seen anything like it either in
color or texture,--it was of a peculiarly warm, rich crimson, like the
heart of a red damask rose, and it suited the bright hair and tender,
thoughtful eyes of its owner to perfection.
"Tell me," he said, drawing a little nearer and speaking in a lower
tone, "have you forgiven me for my rudeness the first time I saw you?"
She looked a little troubled.
"Perhaps also I was rude," she said gently. "I did not know you. I
thought--"
"You were quite right," he eagerly interrupted her. "It was very
impertinent of me to ask you for your name. I should have found it out
for myself, as I _have_ done."
And he smiled at her as he said the last words with marked emphasis. She
raised her eyes wistfully.
"And you are glad?" she asked softly and with a sort of wonder in her
accents.
"Glad to know your name? glad to know _you_! Of course! Can you ask such
a question?"
"But why?" persisted Thelma. "It is not as if you were lonely,--you have
friends already. We are nothing to you. Soon you will go away, and you
will think of the Altenfjord as a dream,--and our names will be
forgotten. That is natural!"
What a foolish rush of passion filled his heart as she spoke in those
mellow, almost plaintive accents,--what wild words leaped to his lips
and what an effort it cost him to keep them hack. The heat and
impetuosity of Romeo,--whom up to the present he had been inclined to
consider a particularly stupid youth,--was now quite comprehensible to
his mind, and he, the cool, self-possessed Englishman, was ready at that
moment to outrival Juliet's lover, in his utmost excesses of amorous
folly. In spite of his self-restraint, his voice quivered a little as he
answered her--
"I shall never forget the Altenfjord or you, Miss Gueldmar. Don't you
know there are some things that cannot be forgotten? such as a sudden
glimpse of fine scenery,--a beautiful song, or a pathetic poem?" She
bent her head in assent. "And here there is so much to remember--the
light of the midnight sun,--the glorious mountains, the loveliness of
the whole land!"
"Is it better than other countries you have seen?" asked the girl with
some interest.
"Much better!" returned Sir Philip fervently. "In fact, there is no
place like it in my opinion." He paused at the sound of her pretty
laughter.
"You are--what is it?--ecstatic!" she said mirthfully. "Tell me, have
you been to the south of France and the Pyrenees?"
"Of course I have," he replied. "I have been all over the
Continent,--travelled about it till I'm tired of it. Do you like the
south of France better than Norway?"
"No,--not so very much better," she said dubiously. "And yet a little.
It is so warm and bright there, and the people are gay. Here they are
stern and sullen. My father loves to sail the seas, and when I first
went to school at Arles, he took me a long and beautiful voyage. We went
from Christiansund to Holland, and saw all those pretty Dutch cities
with their canals and quaint bridges. Then we went through the English
Channel to Brest,--then by the Bay of Biscay to Bayonne. Bayonne seemed
to me very lovely, but we left it soon, and travelled a long way by
land, seeing all sorts of wonderful things, till we came to Arles. And
though it is such a long route, and not one for many persons to take, I
have travelled to Arles and back twice that way, so all there is
familiar to me,--and in some things I do think it better than Norway."