Thelma. Marie Corelli

she will not!"

      His voice grew wild again, and Philip asked quietly—

      "Of whom are you speaking, Sigurd?"

      His steady tone seemed to have some compelling influence on the confused mind of the half-witted creature, who answered readily and at once—

      "Of whom should I speak but Thelma? Thelma, the beautiful rose of the northern forest—Thelma—"

      He broke off abruptly with a long shuddering sigh, and rocking himself drearily to and fro, gazed wistfully out to the sea. Errington hazarded a guess as to the purpose of that coffin hidden in the shell cavern.

      "Do you mean Thelma living? . . . or Thelma dead?"

      "Both," answered Sigurd promptly. "They are one and the same,—you cannot part them. Mother and child,—rose and rosebud! One walks the earth with the step of a queen, the other floats in the air like a silvery cloud; but I see them join and embrace and melt into each other's arms till they unite in one form, fairer than the beauty of angels! And you—you know this as well as I do—you have seen Thelma, you have kissed the cup of friendship with her; but remember!—not with me—not with me!"

      He started from his seat, and, running close up to Errington, laid one meagre hand on his chest.

      "How strong you are, how broad and brave," he exclaimed with a sort of childish admiration. "And can you not be generous too?"

      Errington looked down upon him compassionately. He had learned enough from his incoherent talk to clear up what had seemed a mystery. The scandalous reports concerning Olaf Güldmar were incorrect,—he had evidently laid the remains of his wife in the shell-cavern, for some reason connected with his religious belief, and Thelma's visits to the sacred spot were now easy of comprehension. No doubt it was she who placed fresh flowers there every day, and kept the little lamp burning before the crucifix as a sign of the faith her departed mother had professed, and which she herself followed. But who was Sigurd, and what was he to the Güldmars? Thinking this, he replied to the dwarf's question by a counter-inquiry.

      "How shall I be generous, Sigurd? Tell me! What can I do to please you?"

      Sigurd's wild blue eyes sparkled with pleasure.

      "Do!" he cried. "You can go away, swiftly, swiftly, over the seas, and the Altenfjord need know you no more! Spread your white sails!" and he pointed excitedly up to the tall tapering masts of the Eulalie. "You are king here. Command and you are obeyed! Go from us, go! What is there here to delay you? Our mountains are dark and gloomy,—the fields are wild and desolate,—there are rocks, glaciers and shrieking torrents that hiss like serpents gliding into the sea! Oh, there must be fairer lands than this one,—lands where oceans and sky are like twin jewels set in one ring,—where there are sweet flowers and fruits and bright eyes to smile on you all day—yes! for you are as a god in your strength and beauty—no woman will be cruel to you! Ah! say you will go away!" and Sigurd's face was transfigured into a sort of pained beauty as he made his appeal. "That is what I came to seek you for,—to ask you to set sail quickly and go, for why should you wish to destroy me? I have done you no harm as yet. Go!—and Odin himself shall follow your path with blessings!"

      He paused, almost breathless with his own earnest pleading. Errington was silent. He considered the request a mere proof of the poor creature's disorder. The very idea that Sigurd seemed to entertain of his doing him any harm, showed a reasonless terror and foreboding that was simply to be set down as caused by his unfortunate mental condition. To such an appeal there could be no satisfactory reply. To sail away from the Altenfjord and its now most fascinating attractions, because a madman asked him to do so, was a proposition impossible of acceptance, so Sir Philip said nothing. Sigurd, however, watching his face intently, saw, or thought he saw, a look of resolution in the Englishman's clear, deep grey eyes,—and with the startling quickness common to many whose brains, like musical instruments, are jarred, yet not quite unstrung, he grasped the meaning of that expression instantly.

      "Ah! cruel and traitorous!" he exclaimed fiercely. "You will not go; you are resolved to tear my heart out for your sport! I have pleaded with you as one pleads with a king and all in vain—all in vain! You will not go? Listen, see what you will do," and he held up the bunch of purple pansies, while his voice sank to an almost feeble faintness. "Look!" and he fingered the flowers, "look! . . . they are dark and soft as a purple sky,—cool and dewy and fresh;—they are the thoughts of Thelma; such thoughts! So wise and earnest, so pure and full of tender shadows!—no hand has grasped them rudely, no rough touch has spoiled their smoothness! They open full-faced to the sky, they never droop or languish; they have no secrets, save the marvel of their beauty. Now you have come, you will have no pity,—one by one you will gather and play with her thoughts as though they were these blossoms,—your burning hand will mar their color,—they will wither and furl up and die, all of them,—and you,—what will you care? Nothing! no man ever cares for a flower that is withered,—not even though his own hand slew it."

      The intense melancholy that vibrated through Sigurd's voice touched his listener profoundly. Dimly he guessed that the stricken soul before him had formed the erroneous idea that he, Errington, had come to do some great wrong to Thelma or her belongings, and he pitied the poor creature for his foolish self-torture.

      "Listen to me, Sigurd," he said, with a certain imperativeness; "I cannot promise you to go away, but I can promise that I will do no harm to you or to—to—Thelma. Will that content you?"

      Sigurd smiled vacantly and shook his head. He looked at the pansies wistfully and laid them down very gently on one of the deck benches.

      "I must go," he said in a faint voice:—"She is calling me."

      "Who is calling you?" demanded Errington astonished.

      "She is," persisted Sigurd, walking steadily to the gangway. "I can hear her! There are the roses to water, and the doves to feed, and many other things." He looked steadily at Sir Philip, who, seeing he was bent on departure, assisted him to descend the companion ladder into his little boat. "You are sure you will not sail away?"

      Errington balanced himself lightly on the ladder and smiled.

      "I am sure, Sigurd! I have no wish to sail away. Are you all right there?"

      He spoke cheerily, feeling in his own mind that it was scarcely safe for a madman to be quite alone in a cockle-shell of a boat on a deep Fjord, the shores of which were indented with dangerous rocks as sharp as the bristling teeth of fabled sea-monsters, but Sigurd answered him almost contemptuously.

      "All right!" he echoed. "That is what the English say always. All right! As if it were ever wrong with me, and the sea! We know each other,—we do each other no harm. You may die on the sea, but I shall not! No, there is another way to Valhalla!"

      "Oh, I dare say there are no end of ways," said Errington good-temperedly, still poising himself on the ladder, and holding on to the side of his yacht, as he watched his late visitor take the oars and move off. "Good-bye, Sigurd! Take care of yourself! Hope I shall see you again soon."

      But Sigurd replied not. Bending to the oars, he rowed swiftly and strongly, and Sir Philip, pulling up the ladder and closing the gangway, saw the little skiff flying over the water like a bird in the direction of the Güldmar's landing-place. He wondered again and again what relationship, if any, this half-crazed being bore to the bonde and his daughter. That he knew all about them was pretty evident; but how? Catching sight of the pansies left on the deck bench, Errington took them, and, descending to the saloon, set them on the table in a tumbler of water.

      "Thelma's thoughts, the poor little fellow called them," he mused, with a smile. "A pretty fancy of his, and linked with the crazy imaginings of Ophelia too. 'There's pansies, that's for thoughts,' she said, but Sigurd's idea is different; he believes they are Thelma's own thoughts in flower. 'No rough touch has spoiled their smoothness,' he declared; he's right there, I'm sure. And shall I ruffle the sweet leaves; shall I crush the tender petals? or shall I simply transform them, from pansies into roses,—from the dream of love,—into love itself?"

      His