Thelma Part 76

The change that came over Lovisa's face at these words was inexpressibly awful--she grew livid and her lips twitched convulsively.

"Living--living!" she gasped.

"Living!" repeated Guldmar sternly. "Vile hag! Your purpose was frustrated! Your crime destroyed her beauty and shortened her days--but she lived--lived for ten sweet, bitter years, hidden away from all eyes save mine,--mine that never grew tired of looking in her patient, heavenly face! Ten years I held her as one holds a jewel--and, when she died, her death was but falling asleep in these fond arms--"

Lovisa raised herself with a sharp cry, and wrung her hands together--

"Ten years--ten years!" she moaned. "I thought her dead--and she lived on,--beloved and loving all the while. Oh G.o.d, G.o.d, why hast thou made a mockery of Thy servant!" She rocked herself to and fro--then looked up with an evil smile. "Nay, but she _suffered_! That was best. It is worse to suffer than to die. Thank G.o.d, she _suffered_!"

"Ay, she suffered!" said Guldmar fiercely, scarce able to restrain himself from seizing upon the miserable old woman and shaking the sinking life out of her--"And had I but guessed who caused her sufferings, by the sword of Odin, I would have--"

Ulrika laid her hand on his suddenly upraised arm.

"Listen!" she whispered. A low wailing, like the cry of a distressed child, swept round and round the house, followed by a gust of wind and a clattering shower of hailstones. A strange blue light leaped up from the sparkling log fire, and cast an unearthly glow through the room. A deep stillness ensued.

Then--steady and clear and resonant--a single sound echoed through the air, like a long note played on an exceedingly sweet silver trumpet. It began softly--swelled to a crescendo--then died delicately away. Guldmar raised his head--his face was full of rapt and expectant gravity,--his action, too, was somewhat singular, for he drew the knife from his girdle and kissed the hilt solemnly, returning it immediately to its sheath. At the same moment Lovisa uttered a loud cry, and flinging the coverings from her, strove to rise from her bed. Ulrika held her firmly,--she struggled feebly yet determinedly, gazing the while with straining, eager, gla.s.sy eyes into the gloom of the opposite corner.

"Darkness--darkness!" she muttered hoa.r.s.ely,--"and the white faces of dead things! There--there they lie!--all still, at the foot of the black chasm--their mouths move without sound--what--what are they saying? I cannot hear--ask them to speak louder--louder! Ah!" and she uttered a terrified scream that made the rafters ring. "They move!--they stretch out their hands--cold, cold hands!--they are drawing me down to them--down--down--to that darkness! Hold me--hold me! don't let me go to them--Lord, Lord be merciful to me--let me live--live--" Suddenly she drew back in deadly horror, gesticulating with her tremulous lean hands as though it shut away the sight of some loathsome thing unveiled to her view. "Who is it"--she asked in an awful, shuddering whisper--"who is it that says there is no h.e.l.l? _I see it_!" Still retreating backwards, backwards--the clammy dew of death darkening her affrighted countenance,--she turned her glazing eyes for the last time on Guldmar.

Her lips twitched into a smile of dreadful mockery.

"May--thy G.o.ds--reward thee--Olaf Guldmar--even--as mine--are--rewarding--_me_!"

And with these words, her head dropped heavily on her breast. Ulrika laid her back on her pillow, a corpse. The stern, cruel smile froze slowly on her dead features--gradually she became, as it were, a sort of ancient cenotaph, carved to resemble old age combined with unrepenting evil--the straggling white hair that rested on her wrinkled forehead looking merely like snow fallen on sculptured stone.

"Good Lord, have mercy on her soul!" murmured Ulrika piously, as she closed the upward staring eyes, and crossed the withered hands.

"Good devil, claim thine own!" said Guldmar, with proudly lifted arm and quivering, disdainful lips. "Thou foolish woman! Thinkest thou thy Lord makes place for murderers in His heaven? If so, 'tis well I am not bound there! Only the just can tread the pathway to Valhalla,--'tis a better creed!"

Ulrika looked at his superb, erect figure and lofty head, and a strangely anxious expression flitted across her dull countenance.

"Nay, _bonde_, we do not believe that the Lord accepteth murderers, without they repent themselves of their backslidings,--but if with penitence they turn to Him even at the eleventh hour, haply they may be numbered among the elect."

Guldmar's eyes flashed. "I know not thy creed, woman, nor care to learn it! But, all the same, thou art deceived in thy vain imaginings. The Eternal Justice cannot err--call that justice Christ or Odin as thou wilt. I tell you, the soul of the innocent bird that perishes in the drifting snow is near and dear to its Creator--but the tainted soul that had yonder vile body for its tenement, was but a flame of the evil one, and accursed from the beginning,--it must return to him from whom it came. A heaven for such as she? Nay--rather the lowest circle of the furthest and fiercest everlasting fires--and thither do I commend her!

Farewell!"

Rapidly m.u.f.fling himself up in his wraps, he strode out of the house. He sprang into his sledge, throwing a generous gratuity to the small Laplander who had taken charge of it, and who now ventured to inquire--

"Has the good Lovisa left us?"

Guldmar burst into a hard laugh. "_Good_! By my soul! The folks of Talvig take up murderers for saints and criminals for guides! 'Tis a wild world! Yes--she has gone--where all such blessed ones go--to--heaven!" He shook his clenched fist in the air--then hastily gathering up the reins, prepared to start.

The Lapp, after the manner of his race, was easily frightened, and cowered back, terrified at the _bonde's_ menacing gesture and fierce tone,--but quickly bethinking himself of the liberal fee he clutched in his palm, he volunteered a warning to this kingly old man with the streaming white hair and beard, and his keen eyes that were already fixed on the dark sweep of the rough, uneven road winding towards the Altenfjord.

"There is a storm coming, Jarl Guldmar!" he stammered.

Guldmar turned his head. "Why call me Jarl?" he demanded half angrily.

"'Tis a name I wear not."

He touched the reindeer lightly with his long whip--the sensitive beast started and sprang forward.

Once more the Lapp exclaimed, with increased excitement and uncouth gestures--

"Storm is coming!--wide--dark, deep! See how the sky stoops with the hidden snow!"

He pointed to the north, and there, low on the horizon, was a lurid red gleam like a smouldering fire, while just above it a greenish blackness of cloud hung heavy and motionless. Towards the central part of the heaven two or three stars shone with frosty brightness, and through a few fleecy ribbons of greyish mist limmered the uncertain promise of a faint moon.

Guldmar smiled slightly. "Storm coming?" he answered almost gaily. "That is well! Storm and I are old friends, my lad! Good night!"

Once more he touched his horned steeds, and with a jingle-jangle of musical bells and a scudding, slippery hissing across the hard snow, the sledge sped off with fairy-like rapidity, and in a few moments its one little guiding lantern disappeared in the darkness like a suddenly extinguished candle.

The Lapp stood pondering and gazing after it, with the _bonde's_ money in his palm, till the cold began to penetrate even his thick skin-clothing and his fat little body, well anointed with whale-oil though it was,--and becoming speedily conscious of this, he scampered with extraordinary agility, considering the dimensions of his snow-shoes, into the hut where he had his dwelling, relating to all who choose to hear, the news of old Lovisa Elsland's death, and the account of his brief interview with the dreaded but generous pagan.

Ulrika, watching by the corpse of her aged friend, was soon joined by others bent on sharing her vigil, and the house was presently filled with woman's religious wailings and prayers for the departed. To all the curious inquiries that were made concerning the cause of Lovisa's desire to see the _bonde_ before she died, Ulrika vouchsafed no reply,--and the villagers, who stood somewhat in awe of her as a woman of singular G.o.dliness and discreet reputation, soon refrained from asking any more questions. An ambitious young Lutheran preacher came, and, addressing himself to all a.s.sembled, loudly extolled the superhuman virtues of the dead "Mother of the village," as Lovisa had been called,--amid the hysterical weeping and moaning of the mourners, he begged them to look upon her "venerated face" and observe "the smile of G.o.d's own peace engraven there,"--and amid all his eloquence, and the shrieking excitement of his fanatical hearers, Ulrika alone was silent.

She sat stern and absorbed, with set lips and lowered eyelids at the head of the bed whereon the corpse was now laid out, grimly rigid,--with bound-up jaws, and clasped fingers like stiff, dried bones. Her thoughts dwelt gloomily and intently on Guldmar's words--"The Eternal Justice cannot err." Eternal Justice! What sentence would Eternal Justice pa.s.s upon the crime of murder?--or attempt to murder? "I am guilty," the unhappy woman reflected, with a strong shudder chilling her veins, "guilty even as Lovisa! I tried to kill my child--I thought, I hoped it was dead! It was not my meaning that it should live. And this Eternal Justice, may be, will judge the intention more than the crime. O Lord, Lord! save my soul! Teach me how to escape from the condemning fires of Thine anger!" Thus she prayed and wrestled with, her accusing self in secret--despair and fear raging in her heart, though not a flicker of her inward agitation betrayed itself outwardly on her stolid, expressionless features.

Meanwhile the wind rose to a tearing, thunderous gale, and the night, already so dark, darkened yet more visibly. Olaf Guldmar, driving swiftly homewards, caught the first furious gust of the storm that came rushing onward from the North Cape, and as it swooped sideways against his light sledge, he was nearly hurled from his seat by the sudden violence of the shock. He settled himself more firmly, encouraging with a cheery word the startled reindeer, who stopped short,--stretching out their necks and sniffing the air, their hairy sides heaving with the strain of trotting against the blast, and the smoke of their breath steaming upwards in the frosty air like white vapor. The way lay now through a narrow defile bordered with tall pines,--and as the terrified animals, recovering, shook the tinkling bells on their harness, and once more resumed their journey, the road was comparatively sheltered, and the wind seemed to sink as suddenly as it rose. There was a hush--an almost ominous silence.

The sledge glided more slowly between the even lines of upright giant trees, crowned with icicles and draped in snow,--the _bonde_ involuntarily loosened the reins of his elfin steeds, and again returned to those painful and solemn musings, from which the stinging blow of the tempest had for a moment roused him. The proud heart of the old man ached bitterly. What! All these years had pa.s.sed, and he, the descendant of a hundred Vikings, had been cheated of justice! He had seen his wife,--the treasured darling of his days, suffering,--dying, inch by inch, year by year, with all her radiant beauty withered,--and he had never known her destroyer! Her fall from the edge of the chasm had been deemed by them both an accident, and yet--this wretched Lovisa Elsland--mad with misplaced, disappointed pa.s.sion, jealousy, and revenge,--had lived on to the extreme of life, triumphant and unsuspected.

"I swear the G.o.ds have played me false in this!" he muttered, lifting his eyes in a sort of fierce appeal to the motionless pinetops stiff with frost. The mystery of the old hag's hatred of his daughter was now made clear--she resembled her mother too closely to escape Lovisa's malice. He remembered the curse she had called down upon the innocent girl,--how it was she who had untiringly spread abroad the report among the superst.i.tious people of the place, that Thelma was a witch whose presence was a blight upon the land,--how she had decoyed her into the power of Mr. Dyceworthy--all was plain--and, notwithstanding her deliberate wickedness, she had lived her life without punishment! This was what made Guldmar's blood burn, and pulses thrill. He could not understand why the Higher Powers had permitted this error of justice, and, like many of his daring ancestors, he was ready to fling defiance in the very face of Odin, and demand--"Why,--O thou drowsy G.o.d, nodding over thy wine-cups,--why didst thou do this thing?"

Utter fearlessness,--bodily and spiritual,--fearlessness of past, present, or future, life or death,--was Guldmar's creed. The true Norse warrior spirit was in him--had he been told, on heavenly authority, that the lowest range of the "Nastrond" or Scandinavian h.e.l.l, awaited him, he would have accepted his fate with unflinching firmness. The indestructibility of the soul, and the certainty that it must outlive even centuries of torture, and triumph gloriously in the end, was the core of the faith he professed. As he glanced upwards, the frozen tree-tops, till then rigidly erect, swayed slightly from side to side with a crackling sound--but he paid no heed to this slight warning of a fresh attack from the combative storm that was gathering together and renewing its scattered forces. He began to think of his daughter, and the grave lines on his face relaxed and softened.

"'Tis all fair sailing for the child," he mused. "For that I should be grateful! The world has been made a soft nest for my bird,--I should not complain,--my own time is short." His former anger calmed a little--the brooding irritation of his mind became gradually soothed.

"Rose of my heart!" he whispered, tenderly apostrophizing the memory of his wife,--that lost jewel of love, whose fair body lay enshrined in the king's tomb by the Fjord. "Wrongfully done to death as thou wert, and brief time as we had for loving;--in spite of thy differing creed, I feel that I shall meet thee soon! Yes--in the world beyond the stars, they will bring thee to me in Valhalla,--wheresoever thou art, thou wilt not refuse to come! The G.o.ds themselves cannot unfasten the ties of love between us!"

As he half thought, half uttered, these words, the reindeer again stopped abruptly, rearing their antlered heads and panting heavily.

Hark! what was that? A clear, far-reaching note of music seemingly wakened from the waters of the Fjord and rising upwards, upwards, with bell-like distinctness! Guldmar leaned from his motionless sledge and listened in awe--it was the same sound he had before heard as he stood by Lovisa Elsland's death-bed--and was in truth nothing but a strong current of wind blowing through the arched and honeycombed rocks by the sea, towards the higher land,--creating the same effect as though one should breathe forcibly through a pipe-like instrument of dried and hollow reeds,--and being rendered more resonant by the intense cold, it bore a striking similarity to the full blast of a war-trumpet. For the worshipper of Odin, it had a significant and supernatural meaning,--and he repeated his former action--that of drawing the knife from his girdle and kissing the hilt. "If Death is near me," he said in a loud voice, "I bid it welcome! The G.o.ds know that I am ready!"

He waited as though expecting some answer--but there was a brief, absolute silence. Then, with a wild shriek and riotous uproar, the circling tempest,--before uncertain and vacillating in its wrath,--pounced, eagle-like, downward and grasped the mountains in its talons,--the strong pines rocked backwards and forwards as though bent by Herculean hands, crashing their frosted branches madly together:--the ma.s.sive clouds in the sky opened and let fall their burden of snow. Down came the large fleecy flakes, twisting dizzily round and round in a white waltz to the whirl of the wind--faster--faster--heavier and thicker, till there seemed no clear s.p.a.ce in the air. Guldmar urged on the reindeer, more anxious for their safety than his own--the poor beasts were fatigued, and the blinding snow confused them, but they struggled on patiently, encouraged by their master's voice and the consciousness that they were nearing home. The storm increased in fury--and a fierce gust of frozen sleet struck the sledge like a strong hammer-stroke as it advanced through the rapidly deepening snow-drifts--its guiding lantern was extinguished. Guldmar did not stop to relight it--he knew he was approaching his farm, and he trusted to the instinct and sagacity of his steeds.

There was indeed but a short distance to go,--the narrow wooded defile opened out on two roads, one leading direct to Bosekop--the other, steep and tortuous, winding down to the sh.o.r.e of the Fjord--this latter pa.s.sed the _bonde's_ gate. Once out of the shadow of the pines, the way would be more distinctly seen,--the very reindeer seemed to be conscious of this, for they trotted more steadily, shaking their bells in even and rhythmical measure. As they neared the end of the long dark vista, a sudden bright blue glare quivered and sprang wave-like across the snow--a fantastic storm-aurora that flashed and played among the feathery falling flakes of white till they looked like knots and closters of sparkling jewels. The extreme point of the close defile was reached at last, and here the landscape opened up wide, rocky and desolate--a weird picture,--with the heavy clouds above repeatedly stabbed through and through by the needle-pointed beams of the aurora borealis,--and the blank whiteness of the ground below. Just as the heads of the reindeer were turned into the homeward road, half of the aurora suddenly faded, leaving the other half still beating out its azure brilliance against the horizon. At the same instant, with abrupt swiftness, a dark shadow,--so dark as to seem almost palpable,--descended and fell directly in front of the advancing sledge--a sort of mist that appeared to block the way.

Guldmar leaned forward and gazed with eager, straining eyes into that drooping gloom--a shadow?--a mere vapor, with the Northern Lights glimmering through its murky folds? Ah no--no! For him it was something very different,--a heavenly phantasm, beautiful and grand, with solemn meaning! He saw a Maiden, majestically tall, of earnest visage and imperial mien,--her long black hair streamed loose upon the wind--in one hand she held a shining shield--in the other a lifted spear! On her white brow rested a glittering helmet,--her bosom heaved beneath a corslet of pale gold--she fixed her divine, dark eyes full upon his face and smiled! With a cry of wonder and ecstacy the old man fell back in his sledge,--the reins dropped from his hands,--"The _Valkyrie_! the _Valkyrie_!" he exclaimed.

A mere breathing s.p.a.ce, and the shadow vanished,--the aurora came out again in unbroken splendor--and the reindeer, feeling no restraint upon them, and terrified by something in the air, or the ceaseless glitter, of the lights in the sky, started off precipitately at full gallop. The long reins trailed loosely over their backs, lashing their sides as they ran--Guldmar, recovering from his momentary awe and bewilderment, strove to seize them, but in vain. He called, he shouted,--the frightened animals were utterly beyond control, and dashed madly down the steep road, swinging the sledge from side to side, and entangling themselves more and more with the loose reins, till, irritated beyond endurance, confused and blinded by the flash of the aurora and the dizzy whirl of the swiftly falling snow, they made straight for a steep bank,--and before the _bonde_ had time to realize the situation and jump from the sledge--crash! down they went with a discordant jangle of bells, their hoofs splitting a thin, sharp shelf of ice as they leaped forward,--dragging the light vehicle after them, and twisting it over and over till it was a mere wreck,--and throwing out its occupant head foremost against a jagged stone.

Then more scared than ever, they strove to clamber out of the gully into which they had recklessly sprung, but, foiled in these attempts, they kicked, plunged, and reared,--trampling heedlessly over the human form lying helpless among the shattered fragments of the sledge,--till tired out at last, they stood motionless, panting with terror. Their antlered heads cast fantastic patterns on the snow in the varying rose and azure radiance that rippled from the waving ribbons of the aurora,--and close to them, his slowly trickling life-blood staining the white ground,--his hair and beard glittering in the light like frosted silver,--his eyes fast closed as though he slept,--lay Olaf Guldmar unconscious--dying.

The spear of the Valkyrie had fallen!

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

"Bury me not when I am dead-- Lay me not down in a dusty bed; I could not bear the life down there, With the wet worms crawling about my hair!"