Thelma
blown fiercely by the wind, and gleaming red through the flaky
snow-storm.
The aurora borealis faded by gradual degrees, and the flaming ship was
more than ever distinctly visible. She was seen from the shore of
Bosekop, by a group of the inhabitants, who, rubbing their dull eyes,
could not decide whether what they beheld was fire, or a new phase of
the capricious, ever-changing Northern Lights,--the rapidly descending
snow rendering their vision bewildered and uncertain. Any way, they
thought very little about it,--they had had excitement of another kind
in the arrival of Ulrika from Talvig, bringing accounts of the godly
Lovisa Elsland's death.
Moreover, an English steam cargo-boat, bound for the North Cape, had,
just an hour previously, touched at their harbor, to land a
passenger,--a mysterious woman closely veiled, who immediately on
arrival had hired a sledge, and had bidden the driver to take her to the
house of Olaf Gueldmar, an eight miles journey through the drifted snow.
All this was intensely interesting to the good, stupid, gossiping
fisher-folks of Bosekop,--so much so, indeed, that they scarcely paid
any heed to the spectacle of the fiery ship swaying suggestively on the
heaving water, and drifting rapidly away--away towards the frosted peaks
of Seiland.
Further and further she receded,--the flames around her waving like
banners in a battle--further and further still--till Valdemar Svensen,
from his station on the pier, began to lose sight of her blazing
timbers,--and, starting from his reverie, he ran rapidly from the shore,
up through the garden paths to the farm-house, in order to gain the
summit, and from that point of vantage, watch the last glimmering spark
of the Viking's burial. As he reached the house, he stopped short and
uttered a wild exclamation. There,--under the porch hung with sparkling
icicles,--stood Thelma! . . . Thelma,--her face pale and weary, yet
smiling faintly,--Thelma with the glint of her wondrous gold hair
escaping from under her hat, and glittering on the folds of her dark fur
mantle.
"I have come home, Valdemar!" said the sweet, rich, penetrating voice.
"Where is my father?"
As a man distraught, or in some dreadful dream, Valdemar approached
her--the strangeness of his look and manner filled her with sudden
fear,--he caught her hand and pointed to the dark Fjord--to the spot
where gleamed a lurid waving wreath of flames.
"Froeken Thelma--he is _there_!" he gasped in choked, hoarse tones.
"_there_--where the gods have called him!"
With a faint shriek of terror, Thelma's blue eyes turned toward the
shadowy water,--as she looked, a long up-twisting snake of fire appeared
to leap from the perishing _Valkyrie_,--a snake that twined its
glittering coils rapidly round and round on the wind, and as rapidly
sank--down--down--to one glimmering spark which glowed redly like a
floating lamp for a brief space,--and was then quenched for ever! The
ship had vanished! Thelma needed no explanation,--she knew her father's
creed--she understood all. Breaking loose from Valdemar's grasp, she
rushed a few steps forward with arms outstretched on the bitter, snowy
air.
"Father! father!" she cried aloud and sobbingly. "Wait for me!--it is I
Thelma!--I am coming--Father!"
The white world around her grew black--and, shuddering like a shot bird,
she fell senseless.
Instantly Valdemar raised her from the ground, and holding her tenderly
and reverently in his strong arms, carried her, as though she were a
child, into the house . . . clouds darkened--the snow-storm
thickened--the mountain-peaks, stern giants, frowned through their
sleety veils at the arctic desolation of the land below them,--and over
the charred and sunken corpse of the departed servant of Odin, sounded
the solemn De Profundis of the sea.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
"The body is the storm;
The soul the star beyond it, in the deep
Of Nature's calm. And, yonder, on the steep,
The Sun of Faith, quiescent, round, and warm!"
Late on that same night, the pious Ulrika was engaged in prayer. Prayer
with her was a sort of fanatical wrestling of the body as well as of the
soul,--she was never contented unless by means of groans and contortions
she could manage to work up by degrees into a condition of hysteria
resembling a mild epileptic attack, in which state alone she considered
herself worthy to approach the Deity. On this occasion she had some
difficulty to attain the desired result--her soul, as she herself
expressed it, was "dry"--and her thoughts wandered,--though she pinched
her neck and arms with the hard resoluteness of a sworn flagellant, and
groaned, "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!" with indefatigable
earnestness. She was considerably startled in the midst of these
energetic devotions by a sudden jangling of sledge--bells, and aloud
knocking--a knocking which threatened to break down the door of the
small and humble house she inhabited. Hastily donning the coarse gown
and bodice she had recently taken off in order to administer
chastisement to her own flesh more thoroughly, she unfastened her bolts
and bars, and, lifting the latch, was confronted by Valdemar Svensen,
who, nearly breathless with swift driving through the snow-storm, cried
out in quick gasps--
"Come with me--come! She is dying!"
"God help the man!" exclaimed Ulrika startled. "Who is dying?"
"She--the Froeken Thelma--Lady Errington--she is all alone up there," and
he pointed distractedly in the direction from whence he had come. "I can
get no one in Bosekop,--the women are cowards all,--all afraid to go
near her," and he wrung his hands in passionate distress.
Ulrika pulled a thick shawl from the nail where it hung and wrapped it
round her.
"I am ready," she said, and without more delay, stepped into the waiting
sledge, while Valdemar, with an exclamation of gratitude and relief,
took his place beside her. "But how is it?" she asked, as the reindeer
started off at full speed, "how is it that the _bonde's_ daughter is
again at the Altenfjord?"
"I know not!" answered Svensen despairingly. "I would have given my life
not to have told her of her father's death."
"Death!" cried Ulrika. "Olaf Gueldmar _dead_! Impossible! Only last night
I saw him in the pride of his strength,--and thought I never had beheld
so goodly a man. Lord, Lord! That he should be _dead_!"
In a few words Svensen related all that had happened, with the exception
of the fire-burial in the Fjord.
But Ulrika immediately asked, "Is his body still in the house?"
Svensen looked at her darkly. "Hast thou never heard Ulrika," he said
solemnly, "that the bodies of men who follow Olaf Gueldmar's creed,
disappear as soon as the life departs from them? It is a
mystery--strange and terrible! But this is true--my master's
sailing-ship has gone, and his body with it--and I know not where!"
Ulrika surveyed him steadily with a slow, incredulous smile. After a
pause, she said--
"Fidelity in a servant is good, Valdemar Svensen! I know you well--I
also know that a pagan shrinks from Christian burial. Enough said--I
will ask no more--but if Olaf Gueldmar's ship's has gone, and he with
it,--I warn you, the village will wonder."
"I cannot help it," said Svensen with cold brevity. "I have spoken
truth--he has gone! I saw him die--and then vanish. Believe it or not as
you will, I care not!"
And he drove on in silence. Ulrika was silent too.
She had known Valdemar Svensen for many years--he was a man universally
liked and respected at all the harbors and different fishing-stations of
Norway, and his life was an open book to everybody, with the exception
of one page, which was turned down and sealed,--this was the question of
his religious belief. No one knew what form of faith he followed,--it
was only when he went to live with the _bonde_, after Thelma's
marriage,--that the nature of his creed was dimly suspected. But Ulrika
had no dislike for him on this account,--her opinions had changed very
much during the past few months. As devout a Lutheran as ever, she began
to entertain a little more of the true spirit of Christianity--that
spirit of gentle and patient tolerance which, full of forbearance
towards all humanity, is willing to admit the possibility of a little
good in everything, even in the blind tenets of a heathen creed. Part of
this alteration in her was due to the gratitude she secretly felt
towards the Gueldmar family, for having saved from destruction,--albeit
unconscious of his parentage,--Sigurd, the child she had attempted to
murder. The hideous malevolence of Lovisa Elsland's nature had shown her
that there _may_ be bad Lutherans,--the invariable tenderness displayed
by the Gueldmars for her unrecognized, helpless and distraught son,--had
proved to her that there _may_ be good heathens. Hearing thus suddenly
of the _bonde's_ death, she was strangely affected--she could almost
have wept. She felt perfectly convinced that Svensen had made away with
his master's body by some mysterious rite connected with pagan
belief,--she knew that Gueldmar himself, according to rumor, had buried
his own wife in some unknown spot, with strange and weird ceremonials,
but she was inclined to be tolerant,--and glancing at Svensen's grave,
pained face from time to time as she sat beside him in the sledge, she
resolved to ask him no more questions on the subject, but to accept and
support, if necessary, the theory he had so emphatically set
forth,--namely, the mystical evanishment of the corpse by some
supernatural agency.
As they neared their destination, she began to think of Thelma, the
beautiful, proud girl whom she remembered best as standing on a little
green-tufted hillock with a cluster of pansies in her hand, and
Sigurd--Sigurd clinging fondly to her white skirts, with a wealth of
passionate devotion in his upturned, melancholy, blue eyes. Ulrika had
seen her but once since then,--and that was on the occasion when, at the
threat of Lovisa Elsland, and the command of the Reverend Mr.
Dyceworthy, she had given her Sir Philip Errington's card, with the
false message written on it that had decoyed her for a time into the
wily minister's power. She felt a thrill of shame as she remembered the
part she had played in that cruel trick,--and reverting once more to the
memory of Sigurd, whose tragic end at the Fall of Njedegorze she had
learned through Valdemar, she resolved to make amends now that she had
the chance, and to do her best for Thelma in her suffering and trouble.
"For who knows," mused Ulrika, "Whether it is not the Lord's hand that
is extended towards me,--and that in the ministering to the wants of her
whom I wronged, and whom my son so greatly loved, I may not thereby
cancel the past sin, and work out my own redemption!"
And her dull eyes brightened with hope, and her heart warmed,--she began
to feel almost humane and sympathetic,--and was so eager to commence her
office of nurse and consoler to Thelma that she jumped out of the sledge
almost before it had stopped at the farm gate. Disregarding Valdemar's
assistance, she clambered sturdily over the drifted heaps of slippery
snow that blocked the deserted pathways, and made for the
house,--Valdemar following her as soon as he had safely fastened up the
sledge, which was not his own, he having in emergency borrowed it from a
neighbor. As they approached, a sound came floating to meet them--a
sound which made them pause and look at each other in surprise and
anxiety. Some one was singing,--a voice full and clear, though with a
strange, uncertain quiver in it, rippled out in wild strains of minor
melody on the snow-laden air. For one moment Ulrika listened doubtedly,
and then without more delay ran hastily forward and entered the house.