Thelma
firmly,--she struggled feebly yet determinedly, gazing the while with
straining, eager, glassy eyes into the gloom of the opposite corner.
"Darkness--darkness!" she muttered hoarsely,--"and the white faces of
dead things! There--there they lie!--all still, at the foot of the black
chasm--their mouths move without sound--what--what are they saying? I
cannot hear--ask them to speak louder--louder! Ah!" and she uttered a
terrified scream that made the rafters ring. "They move!--they stretch
out their hands--cold, cold hands!--they are drawing me down to
them--down--down--to that darkness! Hold me--hold me! don't let me go to
them--Lord, Lord be merciful to me--let me live--live--" Suddenly she
drew back in deadly horror, gesticulating with her tremulous lean hands
as though it shut away the sight of some loathsome thing unveiled to her
view. "Who is it"--she asked in an awful, shuddering whisper--"who is it
that says there is no hell? _I see it_!" Still retreating backwards,
backwards--the clammy dew of death darkening her affrighted
countenance,--she turned her glazing eyes for the last time on Gueldmar.
Her lips twitched into a smile of dreadful mockery.
"May--thy gods--reward thee--Olaf Gueldmar--even--as
mine--are--rewarding--_me_!"
And with these words, her head dropped heavily on her breast. Ulrika
laid her back on her pillow, a corpse. The stern, cruel smile froze
slowly on her dead features--gradually she became, as it were, a sort of
ancient cenotaph, carved to resemble old age combined with unrepenting
evil--the straggling white hair that rested on her wrinkled forehead
looking merely like snow fallen on sculptured stone.
"Good Lord, have mercy on her soul!" murmured Ulrika piously, as she
closed the upward staring eyes, and crossed the withered hands.
"Good devil, claim thine own!" said Gueldmar, with proudly lifted arm and
quivering, disdainful lips. "Thou foolish woman! Thinkest thou thy Lord
makes place for murderers in His heaven? If so, 'tis well I am not bound
there! Only the just can tread the pathway to Valhalla,--'tis a better
creed!"
Ulrika looked at his superb, erect figure and lofty head, and a
strangely anxious expression flitted across her dull countenance.
"Nay, _bonde_, we do not believe that the Lord accepteth murderers,
without they repent themselves of their backslidings,--but if with
penitence they turn to Him even at the eleventh hour, haply they may be
numbered among the elect."
Gueldmar's eyes flashed. "I know not thy creed, woman, nor care to learn
it! But, all the same, thou art deceived in thy vain imaginings. The
Eternal Justice cannot err--call that justice Christ or Odin as thou
wilt. I tell you, the soul of the innocent bird that perishes in the
drifting snow is near and dear to its Creator--but the tainted soul that
had yonder vile body for its tenement, was but a flame of the evil one,
and accursed from the beginning,--it must return to him from whom it
came. A heaven for such as she? Nay--rather the lowest circle of the
furthest and fiercest everlasting fires--and thither do I commend her!
Farewell!"
Rapidly muffling himself up in his wraps, he strode out of the house. He
sprang into his sledge, throwing a generous gratuity to the small
Laplander who had taken charge of it, and who now ventured to inquire--
"Has the good Lovisa left us?"
Gueldmar burst into a hard laugh. "_Good_! By my soul! The folks of
Talvig take up murderers for saints and criminals for guides! 'Tis a
wild world! Yes--she has gone--where all such blessed ones
go--to--heaven!" He shook his clenched fist in the air--then hastily
gathering up the reins, prepared to start.
The Lapp, after the manner of his race, was easily frightened, and
cowered back, terrified at the _bonde's_ menacing gesture and fierce
tone,--but quickly bethinking himself of the liberal fee he clutched in
his palm, he volunteered a warning to this kingly old man with the
streaming white hair and beard, and his keen eyes that were already
fixed on the dark sweep of the rough, uneven road winding towards the
Altenfjord.
"There is a storm coming, Jarl Gueldmar!" he stammered.
Gueldmar turned his head. "Why call me Jarl?" he demanded half angrily.
"'Tis a name I wear not."
He touched the reindeer lightly with his long whip--the sensitive beast
started and sprang forward.
Once more the Lapp exclaimed, with increased excitement and uncouth
gestures--
"Storm is coming!--wide--dark, deep! See how the sky stoops with the
hidden snow!"
He pointed to the north, and there, low on the horizon, was a lurid red
gleam like a smouldering fire, while just above it a greenish blackness
of cloud hung heavy and motionless. Towards the central part of the
heaven two or three stars shone with frosty brightness, and through a
few fleecy ribbons of greyish mist limmered the uncertain promise of a
faint moon.
Gueldmar smiled slightly. "Storm coming?" he answered almost gaily. "That
is well! Storm and I are old friends, my lad! Good night!"
Once more he touched his horned steeds, and with a jingle-jangle of
musical bells and a scudding, slippery hissing across the hard snow, the
sledge sped off with fairy-like rapidity, and in a few moments its one
little guiding lantern disappeared in the darkness like a suddenly
extinguished candle.
The Lapp stood pondering and gazing after it, with the _bonde's_ money
in his palm, till the cold began to penetrate even his thick
skin-clothing and his fat little body, well anointed with whale-oil
though it was,--and becoming speedily conscious of this, he scampered
with extraordinary agility, considering the dimensions of his
snow-shoes, into the hut where he had his dwelling, relating to all who
choose to hear, the news of old Lovisa Elsland's death, and the account
of his brief interview with the dreaded but generous pagan.
Ulrika, watching by the corpse of her aged friend, was soon joined by
others bent on sharing her vigil, and the house was presently filled
with woman's religious wailings and prayers for the departed. To all the
curious inquiries that were made concerning the cause of Lovisa's desire
to see the _bonde_ before she died, Ulrika vouchsafed no reply,--and the
villagers, who stood somewhat in awe of her as a woman of singular
godliness and discreet reputation, soon refrained from asking any more
questions. An ambitious young Lutheran preacher came, and, addressing
himself to all assembled, loudly extolled the superhuman virtues of the
dead "Mother of the village," as Lovisa had been called,--amid the
hysterical weeping and moaning of the mourners, he begged them to look
upon her "venerated face" and observe "the smile of God's own peace
engraven there,"--and amid all his eloquence, and the shrieking
excitement of his fanatical hearers, Ulrika alone was silent.
She sat stern and absorbed, with set lips and lowered eyelids at the
head of the bed whereon the corpse was now laid out, grimly rigid,--with
bound-up jaws, and clasped fingers like stiff, dried bones. Her thoughts
dwelt gloomily and intently on Gueldmar's words--"The Eternal Justice
cannot err." Eternal Justice! What sentence would Eternal Justice pass
upon the crime of murder?--or attempt to murder? "I am guilty," the
unhappy woman reflected, with a strong shudder chilling her veins,
"guilty even as Lovisa! I tried to kill my child--I thought, I hoped it
was dead! It was not my meaning that it should live. And this Eternal
Justice, may be, will judge the intention more than the crime. O Lord,
Lord! save my soul! Teach me how to escape from the condemning fires of
Thine anger!" Thus she prayed and wrestled with her accusing self in
secret--despair and fear raging in her heart, though not a flicker of
her inward agitation betrayed itself outwardly on her stolid,
expressionless features.
Meanwhile the wind rose to a tearing, thunderous gale, and the night,
already so dark, darkened yet more visibly. Olaf Gueldmar, driving
swiftly homewards, caught the first furious gust of the storm that came
rushing onward from the North Cape, and as it swooped sideways against
his light sledge, he was nearly hurled from his seat by the sudden
violence of the shock. He settled himself more firmly, encouraging with
a cheery word the startled reindeer, who stopped short,--stretching out
their necks and sniffing the air, their hairy sides heaving with the
strain of trotting against the blast, and the smoke of their breath
steaming upwards in the frosty air like white vapor. The way lay now
through a narrow defile bordered with tall pines,--and as the terrified
animals, recovering, shook the tinkling bells on their harness, and once
more resumed their journey, the road was comparatively sheltered, and
the wind seemed to sink as suddenly as it rose. There was a hush--an
almost ominous silence.
The sledge glided more slowly between the even lines of upright giant
trees, crowned with icicles and draped in snow,--the _bonde_
involuntarily loosened the reins of his elfin steeds, and again returned
to those painful and solemn musings, from which the stinging blow of the
tempest had for a moment roused him. The proud heart of the old man
ached bitterly. What! All these years had passed, and he, the descendant
of a hundred Vikings, had been cheated of justice! He had seen his
wife,--the treasured darling of his days, suffering,--dying, inch by
inch, year by year, with all her radiant beauty withered,--and he had
never known her destroyer! Her fall from the edge of the chasm had been
deemed by them both an accident, and yet--this wretched Lovisa
Elsland--mad with misplaced, disappointed passion, jealousy, and
revenge,--had lived on to the extreme of life, triumphant and
unsuspected.
"I swear the gods have played me false in this!" he muttered, lifting
his eyes in a sort of fierce appeal to the motionless pinetops stiff
with frost. The mystery of the old hag's hatred of his daughter was now
made clear--she resembled her mother too closely to escape Lovisa's
malice. He remembered the curse she had called down upon the innocent
girl,--how it was she who had untiringly spread abroad the report among
the superstitious people of the place, that Thelma was a witch whose
presence was a blight upon the land,--how she had decoyed her into the
power of Mr. Dyceworthy--all was plain--and, notwithstanding her
deliberate wickedness, she had lived her life without punishment! This
was what made Gueldmar's blood burn, and pulses thrill. He could not
understand why the Higher Powers had permitted this error of justice,
and, like many of his daring ancestors, he was ready to fling defiance
in the very face of Odin, and demand--"Why,--O thou drowsy god, nodding
over thy wine-cups,--why didst thou do this thing?"
Utter fearlessness,--bodily and spiritual,--fearlessness of past,
present, or future, life or death,--was Gueldmar's creed. The true Norse
warrior spirit was in him--had he been told, on heavenly authority, that
the lowest range of the "Nastrond" or Scandinavian Hell, awaited him, he
would have accepted his fate with unflinching firmness. The
indestructibility of the soul, and the certainty that it must outlive
even centuries of torture, and triumph gloriously in the end, was the
core of the faith he professed. As he glanced upwards, the frozen
tree-tops, till then rigidly erect, swayed slightly from side to side
with a crackling sound--but he paid no heed to this slight warning of a
fresh attack from the combative storm that was gathering together and
renewing its scattered forces. He began to think of his daughter, and
the grave lines on his face relaxed and softened.
"'Tis all fair sailing for the child," he mused. "For that I should be
grateful! The world has been made a soft nest for my bird,--I should not