Thelma Part 16

Guldmar laughed. "Well, not quite!" he admitted candidly, "there's not enough muscle about you. I confess I like to see strong fellows--fellows fit to rule the planet on which they are placed. That's my whim!--but you're a neat little chap enough, and I dare say you can hold your own!"

And his eyes twinkled good-temperedly as he filled himself another gla.s.s of his host's fine Burgundy, and drank it off, while Duprez, with a half-plaintive, half-comical shrug of resignation to Guldmar's verdict on his personal appearance, asked Thelma if she would favor them with a song. She rose from her seat instantly, without any affected hesitation, and went to the piano. She had a delicate touch, and accompanied herself with great taste,--but her voice, full, penetrating, rich and true,--was one of the purest and most sympathetic ever possessed by woman, and its freshness was unspoilt by any of the varied "systems" of torture invented by singing-masters for the ingenious destruction of the delicate vocal organ. She sang a Norwegian love-song in the original tongue, which might be roughly translated as follows:--

"Lovest thou me for my beauty's sake?

Love me not then!

Love the victorious, glittering Sun, The fadeless, deathless, marvellous One!"

"Lovest thou me for my youth's sake?

Love me not then!

Love the triumphant, unperishing Spring, Who every year new charms doth bring!"

"Lovest thou me for treasure's sake?

Oh, love me not then!

Love the deep, the wonderful Sea, Its jewels are worthier love than me!"

"Lovest thou me for Love's own sake?

Ah sweet, then love me!

More than the Sun and the Spring and the Sea, Is the faithful heart I will yield to thee!"

A silence greeted the close of her song. Though the young men were ignorant of the meaning of the words still old Guldmar translated them for their benefit, they could feel the intensity of the pa.s.sion vibrating through her ringing tones,--and Errington sighed involuntarily. She heard the sigh, and turned round on the music-stool laughing.

"Are you so tired, or sad, or what is it?" she asked merrily. "It is too melancholy a tune? And I was foolish to sing it,--because you cannot understand the meaning of it. It is all about love,--and of course love is always sorrowful."

"Always?" asked Lorimer, with a half-smile.

"I do not know," she said frankly, with a pretty deprecatory gesture of her hands,--"but all books say so! It must be a great pain, and also a great happiness. Let me think what I can sing to you now,--but perhaps you will yourself sing?"

"Not one of us have a voice, Miss Guldmar," said Errington. "I used to think I had, but Lorimer discouraged my efforts."

"Men shouldn't sing," observed Lorimer; "if they only knew how awfully ridiculous they look, standing up in dress-coats and white ties, pouring forth inane love-ditties that n.o.body wants to hear, they wouldn't do it.

Only a woman looks pretty while singing."

"Ah, that is very nice!" said Thelma, with a demure smile. "Then I am agreeable to you when I sing?"

Agreeable? This was far too tame a word--they all rose from the table and came towards her, with many a.s.surances of their delight and admiration; but she put all their compliments aside with a little gesture that was both incredulous and peremptory.

"You must not say so many things in praise of me," she said, with a swift upward glance at Errington, where he leaned on the piano regarding her. "It is nothing to be able to sing. It is only like the birds, but we cannot understand the words they say, just as you cannot understand Norwegian. Listen,--here is a little ballad you will all know," and she played a soft prelude, while her voice, subdued to a plaintive murmur, rippled out in the dainty verses of Sainte-Beuve--

"Sur ma lyre, l'autre fois Dans un bois, Ma main preludait a peine; Une colombe descend En pa.s.sant, Blanche sur le luth d'ebene"

"Mais au lieu d'accords touchants, De doux chants, La colombe gemissante Me demande par pitie Sa moitie Sa moitie loin d'elle absente!"

She sang this seriously and sweetly till she came to the last three lines, when, catching Errington's earnest gaze, her voice quivered and her cheeks flushed. She rose from the piano as soon as she had finished, and said to the _bonde_, who had been watching her with proud and gratified looks--

"It is growing late, father. We must say good-bye to our friends and return home."

"Not yet!" eagerly implored Sir Philip. "Come up on deck,--we will have coffee there, and afterwards you shall leave us when you will."

Guldmar acquiesced in this arrangement, before his daughter had time to raise any objection, and they all went on deck, where a comfortable lounging chair was placed for Thelma, facing the most gorgeous portion of the glowing sky, which on this evening was like a moving ma.s.s of molten gold, split asunder here and there by angry ragged-looking rifts of crimson. The young men grouped themselves together at the prow of the vessel in order to smoke their cigars without annoyance to Thelma. Old Guldmar did not smoke, but he talked,--and Errington after seeing them all fairly absorbed in an argument on the best methods of spearing salmon, moved quietly away to where the girl was sitting, her great pensive eyes fixed on the burning splendors of the heavens.

"Are you warm enough there?" he asked, and there was an unconscious tenderness in his voice as he asked the question, "or shall I fetch you a wrap?"

She smiled. "I have my hood," she said. "It is the warmest thing I ever wear, except, of course, in winter."

Philip looked at the hood as she drew it more closely over her head, and thought that surely no more becoming article of apparel ever was designed for woman's wear. He had never seen anything like it either in color or texture,--it was of a peculiarly warm, rich crimson, like the heart of a red damask rose, and it suited the bright hair and tender, thoughtful eyes of its owner to perfection.

"Tell me," he said, drawing a little nearer and speaking in a lower tone, "have you forgiven me for my rudeness the first time I saw you?"

She looked a little troubled.

"Perhaps also I was rude," she said gently. "I did not know you. I thought--"

"You were quite right," he eagerly interrupted her. "It was very impertinent of me to ask you for your name. I should have found it out for myself, as I _have_ done."

And he smiled at her as he said the last words with marked emphasis. She raised her eyes wistfully.

"And you are glad?" she asked softly and with a sort of wonder in her accents.

"Glad to know your name? glad to know _you_! Of course! Can you ask such a question?"

"But why?" persisted Thelma. "It is not as if you were lonely,--you have friends already. We are nothing to you. Soon you will go away, and you will think of the Altenfjord as a dream,--and our names will be forgotten. That is natural!"

What a foolish rush of pa.s.sion filled his heart as she spoke in those mellow, almost plaintive accents,--what wild words leaped to his lips and what an effort it cost him to keep them hack. The heat and impetuosity of Romeo,--whom up to the present he had been inclined to consider a particularly stupid youth,--was now quite comprehensible to his mind, and he, the cool, self-possessed Englishman, was ready at that moment to outrival Juliet's lover, in his utmost excesses of amorous folly. In spite of his self-restraint, his voice quivered a little as he answered her--

"I shall never forget the Altenfjord or you, Miss Guldmar. Don't you know there are some things that cannot be forgotten? such as a sudden glimpse of fine scenery,--a beautiful song, or a pathetic poem?" She bent her head in a.s.sent. "And here there is so much to remember--the light of the midnight sun,--the glorious mountains, the loveliness of the whole land!"

"Is it better than other countries you have seen?" asked the girl with some interest.

"Much better!" returned Sir Philip fervently. "In fact, there is no place like it in my opinion." He paused at the sound of her pretty laughter.

"You are--what is it?--ecstatic!" she said mirthfully. "Tell me, have you been to the south of France and the Pyrenees?"

"Of course I have," he replied. "I have been all over the Continent,--travelled about it till I'm tired of it. Do you like the south of France better than Norway?"

"No,--not so very much better," she said dubiously. "And yet a little.

It is so warm and bright there, and the people are gay. Here they are stern and sullen. My father loves to sail the seas, and when I first went to school at Arles, he took me a long and beautiful voyage. We went from Christiansund to Holland, and saw all those pretty Dutch cities with their ca.n.a.ls and quaint bridges. Then we went through the English Channel to Brest,--then by the Bay of Biscay to Bayonne. Bayonne seemed to me very lovely, but we left it soon, and travelled a long way by land, seeing all sorts of wonderful things, till we came to Arles. And though it is such a long route, and not one for many persons to take, I have travelled to Arles and back twice that way, so all there is familiar to me,--and in some things I do think it better than Norway."

"What induced your father to send you so far away from him?" asked Philip rather curiously.

The girl's eyes softened tenderly. "Ah, that is easy to understand!" she said. "My mother came from Arles."

"She was French, then?" he exclaimed with some surprise.

"No," she answered gravely. "She was Norwegian, because her father and mother both were of this land. She was what they call 'born sadly.' You must not ask me any more about her, please!"

Errington apologized at once with some embarra.s.sment, and a deeper color than usual on his face. She looked up at him quite frankly.

"It is possible I will tell you her history some day," she said, "when we shall know each other better. I do like to talk to you very much! I suppose there are many Englishmen like you?"