“Did he, indeed?” And Lorimer laughed indolently. “I suppose you think better of him now, Sandy?”
Sandy made no reply, and as Errington persisted in turning the conversation away from the merits or demerits of their recent guests, they soon entered on other topics. But that night, before retiring to rest, Lorimer laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and said quietly, with a keen look —
“Well, old man, have you made up your mind? Have I seen the future Lady Bruce-Errington?”
Sir Philip smiled, — then, after a brief pause, answered steadily —
“Yes, George, you have! That is, — if I can win her!”
Lorimer laughed a little and sighed. “There’s no doubt about that, Phil.” And eyeing Errington’s fine figure and noble features musingly, he repeated again thoughtfully— “No doubt about that, my boy!” Then after a pause he said, somewhat abruptly, “Time to turn in — good night!”
“Good night, old fellow!” And Errington wrung his hand warmly, and left him to repose.
But Lorimer had rather a bad night, — he tossed and tumbled a good deal, and had dreams, — unusual visitors with him, — and once or twice he muttered in his sleep,— “No doubt about it — not the least in the world — and if there were—”
But the conclusion of this sentence was inaudible.
CHAPTER XI.
“Tu vas faire un beau rève,
Et t’enivrer d’un plaisir dangereux.
Sur ton chemin l’étoile qui se leve
Longtemps encore éblouira les yeux!”
DE MUSSET.
A fortnight passed. The first excursion in the Eulalie had been followed by others of a similar kind, and Errington’s acquaintance with the Güldmars was fast ripening into a pleasant intimacy. It had grown customary for the young men to spend that part of the day which, in spite of persistent sunshine, they still called evening, in the comfortable, quaint parlor of the old farmhouse, — looking at the view through the rose-wreathed windows, — listening to the fantastic legends of Norway as told by Olaf Güldmar, — or watching Thelma’s picturesque figure, as she sat pensively apart in her shadowed corner spinning. They had fraternized with Sigurd too — that is, as far as he would permit them — for the unhappy dwarf was uncertain of temper, and if at one hour he were docile and yielding as a child, the next he would be found excited and furious at some imaginary slight that he fancied had been inflicted upon him. Sometimes, if good-humored, he would talk almost rationally, — only allowing his fancy to play with poetical ideas concerning the sea, the flowers, or the sunlight, — but he was far more often sullen and silent. He would draw a low chair to Thelma’s side, and sit there with half-closed eyes and compressed lips, and none could tell whether he listened to the conversation around him, or was utterly indifferent to it. He had taken a notable fancy to Lorimer, but he avoided Errington in the most marked and persistent manner. The latter did his best to overcome this unreasonable dislike, but his efforts were useless, — and deciding in his own mind that it was best to humor Sigurd’s vagaries, he soon let him alone, and devoted his attention more entirely to Thelma.
One evening, after supper at the farmhouse, Lorimer, who for some time had been watching Philip and Thelma conversing together in low tones near the open window, rose from his seat quietly, without disturbing the hilarity of the bonde, who was in the middle of a rollicking sea-story, told for Macfarlane’s entertainment, — and slipped out into the garden, where he strolled along rather absently till he found himself in the little close thicket of pines, — the very same spot where he and Philip had stood on the first day of their visit thither. He threw himself down on the soft emerald moss and lit a cigar, sighing rather drearily as he did so.
“Upon my life,” he mused, with a half-smile, “I am very nearly being a hero, — a regular stage-martyr, — the noble creature of the piece! By Jove, I wish I were a soldier! I’m certain I could stand the enemy’s fire better than this! Self-denial? Well, no wonder the preachers make such a fuss about it, It’s a tough, uncomfortable duty. But am I self-denying? Not a bit of it! Look here, George Lorimer” — here he tapped himself very vigorously on his broad chest— “don’t you imagine yourself to be either virtuous or magnanimous! If you were anything of a man at all you would never let your feelings get the better of you, — you would be sublimely indifferent, stoically calm, — and, as it is, — you know what a sneaking, hang-dog state of envy you were in just now when you came out of that room! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, — rascal?”
The inner self he thus addressed was most probably abashed by this adjuration, for his countenance cleared a little, as though he had received an apology from his own conscience. He puffed lazily at his cigar, and felt somewhat soothed. Light steps below him attracted his attention, and, looking down from the little knoll on which he lay, he saw Thelma and Philip pass. They were walking slowly along a little winding path that led to the orchard, which was situated at some little distance from the house. The girl’s head was bent, and Philip was talking to her with evident eagerness. Lorimer looked after them earnestly, and his honest eyes were full of trouble.
“God bless them both!” he murmured half aloud. “There’s no harm in saying that, any how! Dear old Phil! I wonder whether—”
What he would have said was uncertain, for at that moment he was considerably startled by the sight of a meagre, pale face peering through the parted pine boughs, — a face in which two wild eyes shone with a blue-green glitter, like that of newly sharpened steel.
“Hello, Sigurd!” said Lorimer good-naturedly, as he recognized his visitor. “What are you up to? Going to climb a tree?”
Sigurd pushed aside the branches cautiously and approached. He sat down by Lorimer, and, taking his hand, kissed it deferentially.
“I followed you. I saw you go away to grieve alone. I came to grieve also!” he said with a patient gentleness.
Lorimer laughed languidly. “By Jove, Sigurd, you’re too clever for your age! Think I came away to grieve, eh? Not so, my boy — came away to smoke! There’s a come-down for you! I never grieve — don’t know how to do it. What is grief?”
“To love!” answered Sigurd promptly. “To see a beautiful elf with golden wings come fluttering, fluttering gently down from the sky, — you open your arms to catch her — so! . . . and just as you think you have her, she leans only a little bit on one side, and falls, not into your heart — no! — into the heart of some one else! That is grief, because, when she has gone, no more elves come down from the sky, — for you, at any rate, — good things may come for others, — but for you the heavens are empty!”
Lorimer was silent, looking at the speaker curiously.
“How do you get all this nonsense into your head, eh?” he inquired kindly.
“I do not know,” replied Sigurd with a sigh. “It comes! But, tell me,” — and he smiled wistfully— “it is true, dear friend — good friend — it is all true, is it not? For you the heavens are empty? You know it!”
Lorimer flushed hotly, and then grew strangely pale. After a pause, he said in his usual indolent way —
“Look here, Sigurd; you’re romantic! I’m not. I know nothing about elves or empty heavens. I’m all right! Don’t you bother yourself about me.”
The dwarf studied his face attentively, and a smile of almost fiendish cunning suddenly illumined his thin features. He laid his weak-looking white hand on the young man’s arm and said in a lower tone —
“I will tell you what to do. Kill him!”
The last two words were uttered with such intensity of meaning that Lorimer positively recoiled from the accents, and the terrible look which accompanied them.
“I say, Sigurd, this won’t do,” he remonstrated gravely. “You mustn’t talk about killing, you know! It’s not good for you. People don’t kill each other nowadays so easily as you seem to think. It can’t be done, Sigurd! Nobody wants to do it.”
“It can be done!” reiterated the dwarf
imperatively. “It must be done, and either you or I will do it! He shall not rob us, — he shall not steal the treasure of the golden midnight. He shall not gather the rose of all roses—”
“Stop!” said Lorimer suddenly. “Who are you talking about?”
“Who!” cried Sigurd excitedly. “Surely you know. Of him — that tall, proud, grey-eyed Englishman, — your foe, your rival; the rich, cruel Errington. . . .”
Lorimer’s hand fell heavily on his shoulder, and his voice was very stern.
“What nonsense, Sigurd! You don’t know what you are talking about to-day. Errington my foe! Good heavens! Why, he’s my best friend! Do you hear?”
Sigurd stared up at him in vacant surprise, but nodded feebly.
“Well, mind you remember it! The spirits tell lies, my boy, if they say that he is my enemy. I would give my life to save his!”
He spoke quietly, and rose from his seat on the moss as he finished his words, and his face had an expression that was both noble and resolute.
Sigurd still gazed upon him. “And you, — you do not love Thelma?” he murmured.
Lorimer started, but controlled himself instantly. His frank English eyes met the feverishly brilliant ones fixed so appealingly upon him.
“Certainly not!” he said calmly, with a serene smile. “What makes you think of such a thing? Quite wrong, Sigurd, — the spirits have made a mistake again! Come along, — let us join the others.”
But Sigurd would not accompany him. He sprang away like a frightened animal, in haste, and abruptly plunging into the depths of a wood that bordered on Olaf Güldmar’s grounds, was soon lost to sight. Lorimer looked after him in a little perplexity.
“I wonder if he ever gets dangerous?” he thought. “A fellow with such queer notions might do some serious harm without meaning it. I’ll keep an eye on him!”
And once or twice during that same evening, he felt inclined to speak to Errington on the subject, but no suitable opportunity presented itself — and after a while, with his habitual indolence, he partly forgot the circumstance.
On the following Sunday afternoon Thelma sat alone under the wide blossom-covered porch, reading. Her father and Sigurd, — accompanied by Errington and his friends, — had all gone for a mountain ramble, promising to return for supper, a substantial meal which Britta was already busy preparing. The afternoon was very warm, — one of those long, lazy stretches of heat and brilliancy in which Nature seems to have lain down to rest like a child tired of play, sleeping in the sunshine with drooping flowers in her hands. The very ripple of the stream seemed hushed, and Thelma, though her eyes were bent seriously on the book she held, sighed once or twice heavily as though she were tired. There was a change in the girl, — an undefinable something seemed to have passed over her and toned down the redundant brightness of her beauty. She was paler, — and there were darker shadows than usual under the splendor of her eyes. Her very attitude, as she leaned her head against the dark, fantastic carving of the porch, had a touch of listlessness and indifference in it; her sweetly arched lips drooped with a plaintive little line at the corners, and her whole air was indicative of fatigue, mingled with sadness. She looked up now and then from the printed page, and her gaze wandered over the stretch of the scented, flower-filled garden, to the little silvery glimmer of the Fjord from whence arose, like delicate black streaks against the sky, the slender masts of the Eulalie, — and then she would resume her reading with a slight movement of impatience.
The volume she held was Victor Hugo’s “Orientales,” and though her sensitive imagination delighted in poetry as much as in sunshine, she found it for once hard to rivet her attention as closely as she wished to do, on the exquisite wealth of language, and glow of color, that distinguishes the writings of the Shakespeare of France. Within the house Britta was singing cheerily at her work, and the sound of her song alone disturbed the silence. Two or three pale-blue butterflies danced drowsily in and out a cluster of honeysuckle that trailed downwards, nearly touching Thelma’s shoulder, and a diminutive black kitten, with a pink ribbon round its neck, sat gravely on the garden path, washing its face with its tiny velvety paws, in that deliberate and precise fashion, common to the spoiled and petted members of its class. Everything was still and peaceful as became a Sunday afternoon, — so that when the sound of a heavy advancing footstep disturbed the intense calm, the girl was almost nervously startled, and rose from her seat with so much precipitation, that the butterflies, who had possibly been considering whether her hair might not be some new sort of sunflower, took fright and flew far upwards, and the demure kitten scared out of its absurd self-consciousness, scrambled hastily up the nearest little tree. The intruder on the quietude of Güldmar’s domain was the Rev. Mr. Dyceworthy, — and as Thelma, standing erect in the porch, beheld him coming, her face grew stern and resolute, and her eyes flashed disdainfully.
Ignoring the repellant, almost defiant dignity of the girl’s attitude, Mr. Dyceworthy advanced, rather out of breath and somewhat heated, — and smiling benevolently, nodded his head by way of greeting, without removing his hat.
“Ah, Fröken Thelma!” he observed condescendingly. “And how are you to-day? You look remarkably well — remarkably so, indeed!” And he eyed her with mild approval.
“I am well, I thank you,” she returned quietly. “My father is not in, Mr. Dyceworthy.”
The Reverend Charles wiped his hot face, and his smile grew wider.
“What matter?” he inquired blandly. “We shall, no doubt, entertain ourselves excellently without him! It is with you alone, Fröken, that I am desirous to hold converse.”
And, without waiting for her permission, he entered the porch, and settled himself comfortably on the bench opposite to her, heaving a sigh of relief as he did so. Thelma remained standing — and the Lutheran minister’s covetous eye glanced greedily over the sweeping curves of her queenly figure, the dazzling whiteness of her slim arched throat, and the glitter of her rich hair. She was silent — and there was something in her manner as she confronted him that made it difficult for Mr. Dyceworthy to speak. He hummed and hawed several times, and settled his stiff collar once or twice as though it hurt him; finally he said with an evident effort —
“I have found a — a — trinket of yours — a trifling toy — which, perhaps, you would be glad to have again.” And he drew carefully out of his waistcoat pocket, a small parcel wrapped up in tissue paper, which he undid with his fat fingers, thus displaying the little crucifix he had kept so long in his possession. “Concerning this,” he went on, holding it up before her, “I am grievously troubled, — and would fain say a few necessary words—”
She interrupted him, reaching out her hand for the cross as she spoke.
“That was my mother’s crucifix,” she said in solemn, infinitely tender accents, with a mist as of unshed tears in her sweet blue eyes. “It was round her neck when she died. I knew I had lost it, and was very unhappy about it. I do thank you with all my heart for bringing it back to me!”
And the hauteur of her face relaxed, and her smile — that sudden sweet smile of hers, — shone forth like a gleam of sunshine athwart a cloud.
Mr. Dyceworthy’s breath came and went with curious rapidity. His visage grew pale, and a clammy dew broke out upon his forehead. He took the hand she held out, — a fair, soft hand with a pink palm like an upcurled shell, — and laid the little cross within it, and still retaining his hold of her, he stammeringly observed —
“Then we are friends, Fröken Thelma! . . . good friends, I hope?”
She withdrew her fingers quickly from his hot, moist clasp, and her bright smile vanished.
“I do not see that at all!” she replied frigidly. “Friendship is very rare. To be friends, one must have similar tastes and sympathies, — many things which we have not, — and which we shall never have. I am slow to call any person my friend.”
Mr. Dyceworthy’s small pursy mouth drew itself into a tight thin line.
“Except,” he said, with a suave sneer, “except when ‘any person’ happens to be a rich Englishman with a handsome face and easy manners! . . . then you are not slow to make friends, Fröken, — on the contrary, you are remarkably quick!”
The cold haughty stare with which the girl favored him might have frozen a less conceited man to a pillar of ice.
“What do you mean?” she asks abruptly, and with an air of surprise.
The minister’s little ferret-like eyes, drooped under their puny lids, and he fidgeted on the seat with uncomfortable embarrassment. He answered her in the mildest of mild voices.
“You are unlike yourself, my dear Fröken!” he said, with a soothing gesture of one of his well-trimmed white hands. “You are generally frank and open, but to-day I find you just a little, — well! — what shall I say — secretive! Yes, we will call it secretive! Oh, fie!” and Mr. Dyceworthy laughed a gentle little laugh; “you must not pretend ignorance of what I mean! All the neighborhood is talking of you and the gentleman you are so often seen with. Notably concerning Sir Philip Errington, — the vile tongue of rumor is busy, — for, according to his first plans when his yacht arrived here, he was bound for the North Cape, — and should have gone there days ago. Truly, I think, — and there are others who think also in the same spirit of interest for you, — that the sooner this young man leaves our peaceful Fjord the better, — and the less he has to do with the maidens of the district, the safer we shall be from the risk of scandal.” And he heaved a pious sigh.
Thelma turned her eyes upon him in wonderment.
“I do not understand you,” she said coldly. “Why do you speak of others? No others are interested in what I do? Why should they be? Why should you be? There is no need!”
Mr. Dyceworthy grew slightly excited. He felt like a runner nearing the winning-post.
“Oh, you wrong yourself, my dear Fröken,” he murmured softly, with a sickly attempt at tenderness in his tone. “You really wrong yourself! It is impossible, — for me at least, not to be interested in you, — even for our dear Lord’s sake. It troubles me to the inmost depths of my soul to behold in you one of the foolish virgins whose light hath been extinguished for lack of the saving oil, — to see you wandering as a lost sheep in the paths of darkness and error, without a hand to rescue your steps from the near and dreadful precipice! Ay, truly! . . . my spirit yearneth for you as a mother for an own babe — fain would I save you from the devices of the evil one, — fain would I—” here the minister drew out his handkerchief and pressed it lightly to his eyes, — then, as if with an effort overcoming his emotion, he added, with the gravity of a butcher presenting an extortionate bill, “but first, — before my own humble desires for your salvation — first, ere I go further in converse, it behoveth me to enter on the Lord’s business!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 88
