Thelma
tells me how tender and patient and devoted you have been--that even
when she knew nothing else, she was aware of your kindness. God bless
you for it! You have saved her life--"
"Ah, yes, indeed!" interrupted Thelma gently. "And life has grown so
glad for me again! I do owe you so much."
"You owe me nothing," said Ulrika in those harsh, monotonous tones which
she had of late learned to modulate. "Nothing. The debt is all on my
side." She stopped abruptly--a dull red color flushed her face--her eyes
dwelt on Thelma with a musing tenderness.
Sir Philip looked at her in some surprise.
"Yes," she went on. "The debt is all on my side. Hear me out, Sir
Philip--and you too,--you 'rose of the northern forest', as Sigurd used
to call you! You have not forgotten Sigurd?"
"Forgotten him?" said Thelma softly. "Never! . . . I loved him too
well!"
Ulrika's head dropped. "He was my son!" she said.
There was a silence of complete astonishment. Ulrika paused--then, as no
one uttered a word, she looked up boldly, and spoke with a sort of
desperate determination.
"You see you have nothing to thank me for," she went on, addressing
herself to Sir Philip, while Thelma, leaning back on her pillows, and
holding Britta's hand, regarded her with a new and amazed interest.
"Perhaps, if you had known what sort of a woman I am, you might not have
liked me to come near--_her_." And she motioned towards Thelma. "When I
was young--long ago--I loved--" she laughed bitterly. "It seems a
strange thing to say, does it not? Let it pass--the story of my love, my
sin and shame, need not be told here! But Sigurd was my child--born in
an evil hour--and I--I strove to kill him at his birth."
Thelma uttered a faint cry of horror. Ulrika turned an imploring gaze
upon her.
"Don't hate me!" she said, her voice trembling. "Don't, for God's sake,
hate me! You don't know what I have suffered! I was mad, I think, at the
time--I flung the child in the Fjord to drown;--your father, Olaf
Gueldmar, rescued him. I never knew that till long after;--for years the
crime I had committed weighed upon my soul,--I prayed and strove with
the Lord for pardon, but always, always felt that for me there, was no
forgiveness. Lovisa Elsland used to call me "murderess;" she was
right--I was one, or so I thought--till--till that day I met you, Froeken
Thelma, on the hills with Sigurd,--and the lad fought with me." She
shuddered,--and her eyes looked wild. "I recognized him--no matter how!
. . . he bore my mark upon him--he was my son,--_mine_!--the deformed,
crazy creature who yet had wit enough to love _you_--you, whom then I
hated--but now--"
She stopped and advanced a little closer to Thelma's bedside.
"Now, there is nothing I would not do for you, my dear!" she said very
gently. "But you will not need me any more. You understand what you have
done for me,--you and your father? You have saved me by saving
Sigurd,--saved _me_ from being weighed down to hell with the crime of
murder! And you made the boy happy while he lived. All the rest of my
days spent in your service could not pay back the worth of that good
deed. And most heartily do I thank the Lord that he has mercifully
permitted me to tend and comfort you in the hour of trouble--and,
moreover, that He has given me strength to speak and confess my sin and
unworthiness before you ere I depart. For now the trouble is past, I
must remove my shadow from your joy. God bless you!--and--try to think
as kindly as you can of me for--for Sigurd's sake!"
Stooping, she kissed Thelma's hand,--and, before any one had time to
speak a word, she left the room abruptly.
When, in a few minutes, Britta went to look after her, she was gone. She
had departed to her own house in Bosekop, where she obstinately
remained. Nothing would induce her to present herself again before Sir
Philip or Thelma, and it was not till many days after they had left the
Altenfjord that she was once more seen about the village. And then she
was a changed being. No longer harsh or forbidding in manner, she became
humble and gentle,--she ministered to the sick, and consoled the
afflicted--but she was especially famous for her love of children. All
the little ones of the place knew her, and were attracted by her,--and
the time came when Ulrika, white-haired, and of peaceful countenance,
could be seen knitting at her door in the long summer afternoons
surrounded by a whole army of laughing, chattering, dimpled youngsters,
who would play at hide-and-seek behind her chair, and clamber up to kiss
her wrinkled cheeks, putting their chubby arms round her neck with that
guileless confidence children show only to those whom they feel can
appreciate such flattering attentions. Some of her acquaintance were
wont to say that she was no longer the "godly" Ulrika--but however this
might be, it is certain she had drifted a little nearer to the Author of
all godliness, which--after all,--is the most we dare to strive for in
all our differing creeds.
It was not long before Thelma began to recover. The day after her
husband arrived, and Ulrika departed, she rose from her bed with
Britta's assistance, and sat by the blazing fire, wrapped in her white
gown and looking very fragile, though very lovely, Philip had been
talking to her for some time, and now he sat at her feet, holding her
hand in his, and, watching her face, on which there was an expression of
the most plaintive and serious penitence.
"I have been very wicked!" she said, with such a quaint horror of
herself that her husband laughed. "Now I look back upon it all, I think
I have behaved so very badly! because I ought never to have doubted you,
my boy--no--not for all the Lady Winsleighs in the world. And poor Mr.
Neville! he must be so unhappy! But it was that letter--that letter in
your own writing, Philip!"
"Of course!" he answered soothingly. "No wonder you thought me a
dreadful fellow! But you won't do so again, will you, Thelma? You will
believe that you are the crown and centre of my life--the joy of all the
world to me?"
"Yes, I will!" she said softly and proudly. "Though it is always the
same, I never do think myself worthy! But I must try to grow very
conceited, and assure myself that I am very valuable! so that then I
shall understand everything better, and be wiser."
Philip laughed. "Talking of letters," he said suddenly, "here's one I
wrote to you from Hull--it only got here today. Where it has been
delayed is a mystery. You needn't read it--you know everything in it
already. Then there's a letter on the shelf up there addressed in your
writing--it seems never to have been opened."
He reached it down, and gave it to her. As she took it, her face grew
very sad.
"It is the one I wrote to my father before I left London," she said. And
her eyes filled with tears. "It came too late!"
"Thelma," said Sir Philip then, very gently and gravely, "would you
like--can you bear--to read your father's last words to you? He wrote to
you on his death-bed, and gave the letter to Valdemar--"
"Oh, let me see it!" she murmured half-sobbingly. "Father,--dear father!
I knew he would not leave me without a word!"
Sir Philip reverently opened the folded paper which Svensen had
committed to his care that morning, and together they read the _bonde's_
farewell. It ran as follows:--
"THELMA, MY BELOVED,"
"The summons I have waited for has come at last, and the doors of
Valhalla are set open to receive my soul. Wonder not that I
depart with joy! Old as I am, I long for youth--the everlasting
youth of which the strength and savor fails not. I have lived
long enough to know the sameness of this world--though there is
much therein to please the heart and eye of a man--but with that
roving restlessness that was born within me, I desire to sail new
seas and gaze on new lands, where a perpetual light shines that
knows no fading. Grieve not for me--thou wilt remember that,
unlike a Christian, I see in death the chiefest glory of
life--and thou must not regret that I am eager to drain this cup
of world-oblivion offered by the gods. I leave thee,--not
sorrowfully,--for thou art in shelter and safety--the strong
protection of thy husband's love defends thee and the safeguard
of thine own innocence. My blessing upon him and thee! Serve him,
Thelma mine, with full devotion and obedience--even as I have
taught thee,--thus drawing from thy womanlife its best measure of
sweetness,--keep the bright shield of thy truth untarnished--and
live so that at the hour of thine own death-ecstasy thou mayest
depart as easily as a song-bird soaring to the sun! I pass hence
in happiness--if thou dost shed a tear thou wrongest my
memory,--there is naught to weep for. Valdemar will give me the
crimson shroud and ocean grave of my ancestors--but question him
not concerning this fiery pomp of my last voyage--he is but a
serf, and his soul is shaken to its very depths by sorrow. Let
him be--he will have his reward hereafter. And now farewell,
child of my heart--darling of mine age--clear mirror in which my
later life has brightened to content! All partings are brief--we
shall meet again--thou and I and Philip--and all who have loved
or who love each other,--the journey heavenwards may be made by
different roads, but the end--the glory--the immortality is the
same! Peace be upon thee and on thy children and on thy
children's children!"
"Thy father,
OLAF GUeLDMAR."
In spite of the brave old pagan's declaration that tears would wrong his
memory, they dropped bright and fast from his daughter's eyes as she
kissed again and again the words his dying hand had pencilled,--while
Errington knew not which feeling gained the greater mastery over
him,--grief for a good man's loss, or admiration for the strong, heroic
spirit in which that good man had welcomed Death with rejoicing. He
could not help comparing the _bonde's_ departure from this life with
that of Sir Francis Lennox, the man of false fashion, who had let slip
his withered soul with an oath into the land of Nowhere. Presently
Thelma grew calmer, and began to speak in hushed, soft tones--
"Poor Valdemar!" she said meditatively. "His heart must ache very much,
Philip!"
Philip looked up inquiringly.
"You see, my father speaks of the 'crimson shroud,'" she went on. "That
means that he was buried like many of the ancient Norwegian sea
kings;--he was taken from his bed while dying and placed on board his
own ship to breathe his last; then the ship was set on fire and sent out
to sea. I always knew he wished it so. Valdemar must have done it
all--for I,--I saw the last glimpse of the flames on the Fjord the night
I came home! Oh, Philip!" and her beautiful eyes rested tenderly upon
him, "it was all so dreadful--so desolate! I wanted--I prayed to die
also! The world was so empty--it seemed as if there was nothing left!"
Philip, still sitting at her feet, encircled her with both arms, and
drew her down to him.
"My Thelma!" he whispered, "there _is_ nothing left--nothing at all
worth living for,--save Love!"
"Ah! but that," she answered softly, "is everything!"
* * * * * *
Is it so, indeed? Is Love alone worth living for--worth dying for? Is it
the only satisfying good we can grasp at among the shifting shadows of
our brief existence? In its various phases and different workings, is
it, after all, the brightest radiance known in the struggling darkness
of our lives?
Sigurd had thought so,--he had died to prove it. Philip thought
so,--when once more at home in England with his recovered "treasure of