Thelma Part 18

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! n.o.body 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 n.o.ble 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 Guldmar'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 circ.u.mstance.

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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude, 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 b.u.t.terflies danced drowsily in and out a cl.u.s.ter 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 cla.s.s. 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 b.u.t.terflies, 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 Guldmar'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 att.i.tude, 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, Froken 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, Froken, 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 sh.e.l.l,--and laid the little cross within it, and still retaining his hold of her, he stammeringly observed--

"Then we are friends, Froken 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, Froken,--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 embarra.s.sment. He answered her in the mildest of mild voices.

"You are unlike yourself, my dear Froken!" 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!"