Thelma Part 81

This frank statement of Britta's views presented such a new form of doctrine to Ulrika's heavy mind that she was almost appalled by it. G.o.d _couldn't_ burn anybody for ever--He was too good! What a daring idea!

And yet so consoling--so wonderful in the infinite prospect of hope it offered, that she smiled,--even while she trembled to contemplate it.

Poor soul! She talked of heathens--being herself the worst type of heathen--namely, a Christian heathen. This sounds incongruous--yet it may be taken for granted that those who profess to follow Christianity, and yet make of G.o.d, a being malicious, revengeful, and of more evil attributes than they possess themselves,--are as barbarous, as unenlightened, as hopelessly sunken in slavish ignorance as the lowest savage who adores his idols of mud and stone. Britta was quite unconscious of having said anything out of the common--she was addressing herself to Svensen.

"Where is the _bonde_ buried, Valdemar?" she asked in a low tone.

He looked at her with a strange, mysterious smile.

"Buried? Do you suppose his body could mix itself with common earth?

No!--he sailed away, Britta--away--yonder!"

And he pointed out through the window to the Fjord now, invisible in the deep darkness.

Britta stared at him with roundly opened, frightened eyes--her face paled.

"Sailed away? You must be dreaming! Sailed away! How could he--if he was dead?"

Valdemar grew suddenly excited. "I tell you, he sailed away!" he repeated in a low, hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Where is his ship, the _Valkyrie_?

Try if you can find it anywhere--on sea or land! It has gone, and he has gone with it--like a king and warrior--to glory, joy, and victory!

Glory--joy--victory!--those were his last words!"

Britta retreated, and caught Ulrika by the arm. "Is he mad?" she asked fearfully.

Valdemar heard her, and rose from his chair, a pained smile on his face.

"I am not mad, Britta," he said gently. "Do not be afraid! If grief for my master could have turned my brain, I had been mad ere this,--but I have all my wits about me, and I have told you the truth." He paused--then added, in a more ordinary tone, "You will need fresh logs of pine--I will go and bring them in."

And he went out. Britta gazed after him in speechless wonder.

"What does he mean?" she asked.

"What he says," returned Ulrika composedly. "You, like others, must have known that Olaf Guldmar's creed was a strange one--his burial has been strange--that is all!"

And she skillfully turned the conversation, and began to talk of Thelma, her sorrows and sufferings. Britta was most impatient to see her beloved "Froken," and quite grudged Sir Philip the long time he remained alone with his wife.

"He _might_ call me, if only for a moment," Britta thought plaintively.

"I do so want to look at her dear face again! But men are all alike--as long as they've got what _they_ want, they never think of anybody else.

Dear me! I wonder how long I shall have to wait!" So she fumed and fretted, and sat by the kitchen-fire, drinking hot tea and talking to Ulrika--all the while straining her ears for the least sound or movement from the adjoining room. But none came--there was the most perfect silence. At last she could endure it no longer--and, regardless of Ulrika's remonstrances, she stole on tip-toe to the closed door that barred her from the sight of her heart's idol, and turning the handle softly, opened it and looked in. Sir Philip saw her, and made a little warning sign, though he smiled.

He was sitting by the bedside, and in his arms, nestled against his shoulder, Thelma rested. She was fast asleep. The lines of pain had disappeared from her sweet face--a smile was on her lips--her breath came and went with peaceful regularity,--and the delicate hue of a pale rose flushed her cheeks. Britta stood gazing on this fair sight till her affectionate little heart overflowed, and the ready tears dropped like diamonds from her curly lashes.

"Oh, my dear--my dear!" she whispered in a sort of rapture when there was a gentle movement,--and two star-like eyes opened like blue flowers outspreading to the sun.

"Is that you, Britta?" asked a tender, wondering voice--and with a smothered cry of ecstacy, Britta sprang to seize the outstretched hand of her beloved Froken, and cover it with kisses. And while Thelma laughed with pleasure to see her, and stroked her hair. Sir Philip described their long drive through the snow, and so warmly praised Britta's patience, endurance, and constant cheerfulness, that his voice trembled with its own earnestness, while Britta grew rosily red in her deep shyness and embarra.s.sment, vehemently protesting that she had done nothing,--nothing at all to deserve so much commendation. Then, after much glad converse, Ulrika was called, and Sir Philip seizing her hand, shook it with such force and fervor that she was quite overcome.

"I don't know how to thank you!" he said, his eyes sparkling with grat.i.tude. "It's impossible to repay such goodness as yours! My wife tells me how tender and patient and devoted you have been--that even when she knew nothing else, she was aware of your kindness. G.o.d bless you for it! You have saved her life--"

"Ah, yes, indeed!" interrupted Thelma gently. "And life has grown so glad for me again! I do owe you so much."

"You owe me nothing," said Ulrika in those harsh, monotonous tones which she had of late learned to modulate. "Nothing. The debt is all on my side." She stopped abruptly--a dull red color flushed her face--her eyes dwelt on Thelma with a musing tenderness.

Sir Philip looked at her in some surprise.

"Yes," she went on. "The debt is all on my side. Hear me out, Sir Philip--and you too,--you 'rose of the northern forest', as Sigurd used to call you! You have not forgotten Sigurd?"

"Forgotten him?" said Thelma softly. "Never! . . . I loved him too well!"

Ulrika's head dropped. "He was my son!" she said.

There was a silence of complete astonishment. Ulrika paused--then, as no one uttered a word, she looked up boldly, and spoke with a sort of desperate determination.

"You see you have nothing to thank me for," she went on, addressing herself to Sir Philip, while Thelma, leaning back on her pillows, and holding Britta's hand, regarded her with a new and amazed interest.

"Perhaps, if you had known what sort of a woman I am, you might not have liked me to come near--_her_." And she motioned towards Thelma. "When I was young--long ago--I loved--" she laughed bitterly. "It seems a strange thing to say, does it not? Let it pa.s.s--the story of my love, my sin and shame, need not be told here! But Sigurd was my child--born in an evil hour--and I--I strove to kill him at his birth."

Thelma uttered a faint cry of horror. Ulrika turned an imploring gaze upon her.

"Don't hate me!" she said, her voice trembling. "Don't, for G.o.d's sake, hate me! You don't know what I have suffered! I was mad, I think, at the time--I flung the child in the Fjord to drown;--your father, Olaf Guldmar, rescued him. I never knew that till long after;--for years the crime I had committed weighed upon my soul,--I prayed and strove with the Lord for pardon, but always, always felt that for me there, was no forgiveness. Lovisa Elsland used to call me "murderess;" she was right--I was one, or so I thought--till--till that day I met you, Froken Thelma, on the hills with Sigurd,--and the lad fought with me." She shuddered,--and her eyes looked wild. "I recognized him--no matter how!

. . . he bore my mark upon him--he was my son,--_mine_!--the deformed, crazy creature who yet had wit enough to love _you_--you, whom then I hated--but now--"

She stopped and advanced a little closer to Thelma's bedside.

"Now, there is nothing I would not do for you, my dear!" she said very gently. "But you will not need me any more. You understand what you have done for me,--you and your father? You have saved me by saving Sigurd,--saved _me_ from being weighed down to h.e.l.l with the crime of murder! And you made the boy happy while he lived. All the rest of my days spent in your service could not pay back the worth of that good deed. And most heartily do I thank the Lord that he has mercifully permitted me to tend and comfort you in the hour of trouble--and, moreover, that He has given me strength to speak and confess my sin and unworthiness before you ere I depart. For now the trouble is past, I must remove my shadow from your joy. G.o.d bless you!--and--try to think as kindly as you can of me for--for Sigurd's sake!"

Stooping, she kissed Thelma's hand,--and, before any one had time to speak a word, she left the room abruptly.

When, in a few minutes, Britta went to look after her, she was gone. She had departed to her own house in Bosekop, where she obstinately remained. Nothing would induce her to present herself again before Sir Philip or Thelma, and it was not till many days after they had left the Altenfjord that she was once more seen about the village. And then she was a changed being. No longer harsh or forbidding in manner, she became humble and gentle,--she ministered to the sick, and consoled the afflicted--but she was especially famous for her love of children. All the little ones of the place knew her, and were attracted by her,--and the time came when Ulrika, white-haired, and of peaceful countenance, could be seen knitting at her door in the long summer afternoons surrounded by a whole army of laughing, chattering, dimpled youngsters, who would play at hide-and-seek behind her chair, and clamber up to kiss her wrinkled cheeks, putting their chubby arms round her neck with that guileless confidence children show only to those whom they feel can appreciate such flattering attentions. Some of her acquaintance were wont to say that she was no longer the "G.o.dly" Ulrika--but however this might be, it is certain she had drifted a little nearer to the Author of all G.o.dliness, which--after all,--is the most we dare to strive for in all our differing creeds.

It was not long before Thelma began to recover. The day after her husband arrived, and Ulrika departed, she rose from her bed with Britta's a.s.sistance, and sat by the blazing fire, wrapped in her white gown and looking very fragile, though very lovely, Philip had been talking to her for some time, and now he sat at her feet, holding her hand in his, and, watching her face, on which there was an expression of the most plaintive and serious penitence.

"I have been very wicked!" she said, with such a quaint horror of herself that her husband laughed. "Now I look back upon it all, I think I have behaved so very badly! because I ought never to have doubted you, my boy--no--not for all the Lady Winsleighs in the world. And poor Mr.

Neville! he must be so unhappy! But it was that letter--that letter in your own writing, Philip!"

"Of course!" he answered soothingly. "No wonder you thought me a dreadful fellow! But you won't do so again, will you, Thelma? You will believe that you are the crown and centre of my life--the joy of all the world to me?"

"Yes, I will!" she said softly and proudly. "Though it is always the same, I never do think myself worthy! But I must try to grow very conceited, and a.s.sure myself that I am very valuable! so that then I shall understand everything better, and be wiser."

Philip laughed. "Talking of letters," he said suddenly, "here's one I wrote to you from Hull--it only got here today. Where it has been delayed is a mystery. You needn't read it--you know everything in it already. Then there's a letter on the shelf up there addressed in your writing--it seems never to have been opened."

He reached it down, and gave it to her. As she took it, her face grew very sad.

"It is the one I wrote to my father before I left London," she said. And her eyes filled with tears. "It came too late!"

"Thelma," said Sir Philip then, very gently and gravely, "would you like--can you bear--to read your father's last words to you? He wrote to you on his death-bed, and gave the letter to Valdemar--"

"Oh, let me see it!" she murmured half-sobbingly. "Father,--dear father!

I knew he would not leave me without a word!"

Sir Philip reverently opened the folded paper which Svensen had committed to his care that morning, and together they read the _bonde's_ farewell. It ran as follows:--