Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  The place was very silent; only the sea-gulls circled round and round the summit of the great rock, some of them occasionally swooping down on the unwary fishes, their keen eyes perceived in the waters beneath, then up again they soared, swaying their graceful wings and uttering at intervals that peculiar wild cry that in solitary haunts sounds so intensely mournful. Errington gazed about him in doubt for some minutes, then suddenly his face brightened. He sat down again in the boat and resumed his oar.

  “Row quietly, George,” he said in a subdued tone “Quietly — round to the left.”

  The oars dipped noiselessly, and the boat shot forward, — then swerved sharply round in the direction, — and there before them lay a small sandy creek, white and shining as though sprinkled with powdered silver. From this, a small but strongly-built wooden pier ran out into the sea. It was carved all over with fantastic figures, and in it at equal distances, were fastened iron rings, such as are used for the safe mooring of boats. One boat was there already, and Errington recognized it with delight. It was that in which he had seen the mysterious maiden disappear. High and dry on the sand, out of reach of the tides, was a neat sailing-vessel; its name was painted round the stern — The Valkyrie.

  As the two friends ran their boat on shore, and fastened it to the furthest ring of the convenient pier, they caught the distant sound of the plaintiff “coo-cooing” of turtle doves.

  “You’ve done it this time, old boy,” said Lorimer, speaking in a whisper, though he knew not why. “This is the old bonde’s own private landing-place evidently, and here’s a footpath leading somewhere. Shall we follow it?”

  Philip emphatically assented, and, treading softly, like the trespassers they felt themselves to be, they climbed the ascending narrow way that guided them up from the seashore, round through a close thicket of pines, where their footsteps fell noiselessly on a thick carpet of velvety green moss, dotted prettily here and there with the red gleam of ripening wild strawberries. Everything was intensely still, and as yet there seemed no sign of human habitation. Suddenly a low whirring sound broke upon their ears, and Errington, who was a little in advance of his companion, paused abruptly with a smothered exclamation, and drew back on tip-toe, catching Lorimer by the arm.

  “By Jove!” he whispered excitedly, “we’ve come right up to the very windows of the house. Look!”

  Lorimer obeyed, and for once, the light jest died upon his tips. Surprise and admiration held him absolutely silent.

  CHAPTER V.

  “Elle filait et souriait — et je crois qu’elle enveloppa mon coeur avec son fil.” — HEINE.

  Before them, close enough for their outstretched hands to have touched it, was what appeared to be a framed picture, exquisitely painted, — a picture perfect in outline matchless in color, faultless in detail, — but which was in reality nothing but a large latticed window thrown wide open to admit the air. They could now see distinctly through the shadows cast by the stately pines, a long, low, rambling house, built roughly, but strongly, of wooden rafters, all overgrown with green and blossoming creepers; but they scarcely glanced at the actual building, so strongly was their attention riveted on the one window before them. It was surrounded by an unusually broad framework, curiously and elaborately carved, and black as polished ebony. Flowers grew all about it, — sweet peas, mignonette, and large purple pansies — while red and white climbing roses rioted in untrained profusion over its wide sill. Above it was a quaintly built dovecote, where some of the strutting fan-tailed inhabitants were perched, swelling out their snowy breasts, and discoursing of their domestic trials in notes of dulcet melancholy; while lower down, three or four ring-doves nestled on the roof in a patch of sunlight, spreading up their pinions like miniature sails, to catch the warmth and lustre.

  Within the deep, shadowy embrasure, like a jewel placed on dark velvet, was seated a girl spinning, — no other than the mysterious maiden of the shell cavern. She was attired in a plain, straight gown, of some soft white woolen stuff, cut squarely at her throat; her round, graceful arms were partially bare, and as the wheel turned swiftly, and her slender hands busied themselves with the flax, she smiled, as though some pleasing thought had touched her mind. Her smile had the effect of sudden sunshine in the dark room where she sat and span, — it was radiant and mirthful as the smile of a happy child. Yet her dark blue eyes remained pensive and earnest, and the smile soon faded, leaving her fair face absorbed and almost dreamy. The whirr-whirring of the wheel grew less and less rapid, — it slackened, — it stopped altogether, — and, as though startled by some unexpected sound, the girl paused and listened, pushing away the clustering masses of her rich hair from her brow. Then rising slowly from her seat, she advanced to the window, put aside the roses with one hand, and looked out, — thus forming another picture as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than the first.

  Lorimer drew his breath hard. “I say, old fellow,” he whispered; but Errington pressed his arm with vice-like firmness, as a warning to him to be silent, while they both stepped farther back into the dusky gloom of the pine boughs.

  The girl, meanwhile, stood motionless, in a half-expectant attitude, and, seeing her there, some of the doves on the roof flew down and strutted on the ground before her, coo-cooing proudly, as though desirous of attracting her attention. One of them boldly perched on the window-sill; she glanced at the bird musingly, and softly stroked its opaline wings and shining head without terrifying it. It seemed delighted to be noticed, and almost lay down under her hand in order to be more conveniently caressed. Still gently smoothing its feathers, she leaned further out among the clambering wealth of blossoms, and called in a low, penetrating tone, “Father! father! is that you?”

  There was no answer; and, after waited a minute or two, she moved and resumed her former seat, the stray doves flew back to their customary promenade on the roof, and the drowsy whirr-whirr of the spinning-wheel murmured again its monotonous hum upon the air.

  “Come on, Phil,” whispered Lorimer, determined not to be checked this time; “I feel perfectly wretched! It’s mean of us to be skulking about here, as if we were a couple of low thieves waiting to trap some of those birds for a pigeon-pie. Come away, — you’ve seen her; that’s enough.”

  Errington did not move. Holding back a branch of pine, he watched the movements of the girl at her wheel with absorbed fascination.

  Suddenly her sweet lips parted, and she sang a weird, wild melody, that seemed, like a running torrent, to have fallen from the crests of the mountains, bringing with it echoes from the furthest summits, mingled with soft wailings of a mournful wind.

  Her voice was pure as the ring of fine crystal — deep, liquid, and tender, with a restrained passion in it that stirred Errington’s heart and filled it with a strange unrest and feverish yearning, — emotions which were new to him, and which, while he realized their existence, moved him to a sort of ashamed impatience. He would have willingly left his post of observation now, if only for the sake of shaking off his unwonted sensations; and he took a step or two backwards for that purpose, when Lorimer, in his turn, laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

  “For Heaven’s sake, let us hear the song through!” he said in subdued tones. “What a voice! A positive golden flute!”

  His rapt face betokened his enjoyment, and Errington, nothing loth, still lingered, his eyes fixed on the white-robed slim figure framed in the dark old rose-wreathed window — the figure that swayed softly with the motion of the wheel and the rhythm of the song, — while flickering sunbeams sparkled now and then on the maiden’s dusky gold hair, or touched up a warmer tint on her tenderly flushed cheeks, and fair neck, more snowy than the gown she wore. Music poured from her lips as from the throat of a nightingale. The words she sang were Norwegian, and her listeners understood nothing of them; but the melody, — the pathetic appealing melody, — soul-moving as all true melody must be, touched the very core of their hearts, and entangled them in a web of delicious reveries.

>   “Talk of Ary Scheffer’s Gretchen!” murmured Lorimer with a sigh. “What a miserable, pasty, milk-and-watery young person she is beside that magnificent, unconscious beauty! I give in, Phil! I admit your taste. I’m willing to swear that she’s a Sun-Angel if you like. Her voice has convinced me of that.”

  At that instant the song ceased. Errington turned and regarded him steadfastly.

  “Are you hit, George?” he said softly, with a forced smile.

  Lorimer’s face flushed, but he met his friend’s eyes frankly.

  “I am no poacher, old fellow,” he answered in the same quiet accents; “I think you know that. If that girl’s mind is as lovely as her face, I say, go in and win!”

  Sir Philip smiled. His brow cleared and an expression of relief settled there. The look of gladness was unconscious; but Lorimer saw it at once and noted it.

  “Nonsense!” he said in a mirthful undertone. “How can I go in and win, as you say? What am I to do? I can’t go up to that window and speak to 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 Güldmar!”

  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 Güldmar. 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. Güldmar!”

  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. Güldmar,” 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. Güldmar,” 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 — s
he 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. Güldmar, 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 Güldmar 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.