Thelma

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THELMA

BY MARIE CORELLI



THELMA.




BOOK I.

THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.




CHAPTER I.

"Dream by dream shot through her eyes, and each
Outshone the last that lighted."
SWINBURNE.


Midnight,--without darkness, without stars! Midnight--and the unwearied
sun stood, yet visible in the heavens, like a victorious king throned on
a dais of royal purple bordered with gold. The sky above him,--his
canopy,--gleamed with a cold yet lustrous blue, while across it slowly
flitted a few wandering clouds of palest amber, deepening, as they
sailed along, to a tawny orange. A broad stream of light falling, as it
were, from the centre of the magnificent orb, shot lengthwise across the
Altenfjord, turning its waters to a mass of quivering and shifting color
that alternated from bronze to copper,--from copper to silver and azure.
The surrounding hills glowed with a warm, deep violet tint, flecked here
and there with touches of bright red, as though fairies were lighting
tiny bonfires on their summits. Away in the distance a huge mass of rock
stood out to view, its rugged lines transfigured into ethereal
loveliness by a misty veil of tender rose pink,--a hue curiously
suggestive of some other and smaller sun that might have just set.
Absolute silence prevailed. Not even the cry of a sea-mew or kittiwake
broke the almost deathlike stillness,--no breath of wind stirred a
ripple on the glassy water. The whole scene might well have been the
fantastic dream of some imaginative painter, whose ambition soared
beyond the limits of human skill. Yet it was only one of those million
wonderful effects of sky and sea which are common in Norway, especially
on the Altenfjord, where, though beyond the Arctic circle, the climate
in summer is that of another Italy, and the landscape a living poem
fairer than the visions of Endymion.

There was one solitary watcher of the splendid spectacle. This was a man
of refined features and aristocratic appearance, who, reclining on a
large rug of skins which he had thrown down on the shore for that
purpose, was gazing at the pageant of the midnight sun and all its
stately surroundings, with an earnest and rapt expression in his clear
hazel eyes.

"Glorious! beyond all expectation, glorious!" he murmured half aloud, as
he consulted his watch and saw that the hands marked exactly twelve on
the dial. "I believe I'm having the best of it, after all. Even if those
fellows get the _Eulalie_ into good position they will see nothing finer
than this."

As he spoke he raised his field-glass and swept the horizon in search of
a vessel, his own pleasure yacht,--which had taken three of his friends,
at their special desire, to the opposite island of Seiland,--Seiland,
rising in weird majesty three thousand feet above the sea, and boasting
as its chief glory the great peak of Jedke, the most northern glacier in
all the wild Norwegian land. There was no sign of a returning sail, and
he resumed his study of the sumptuous sky, the colors of which were now
deepening and burning with increasing lustre, while an array of clouds
of the deepest purple hue, swept gorgeously together beneath the sun as
though to form his footstool.

"One might imagine that the trump of the Resurrection had sounded, and
that all this aerial pomp,--this strange silence,--was just the pause,
the supreme moment before the angels descended," he mused, with a
half-smile at his own fancy, for though something of a poet at heart, he
was much more of a cynic. He was too deeply imbued with modern
fashionable atheism to think seriously about angels or Resurrection
trumps, but there was a certain love of mysticism and romance in his
nature, which not even his Oxford experiences and the chilly dullness of
English materialism had been able to eradicate. And there was something
impressive in the sight of the majestic orb holding such imperial revel
at midnight,--something almost unearthly in the light and life of the
heavens, as compared with the referential and seemingly worshipping
silence of the earth,--that, for a few moments, awed him into a sense of
the spiritual and unseen. Mythical passages from the poets he loved came
into his memory, and stray fragments of old songs and ballads he had
known in his childhood returned to him with haunting persistence. It
was, for him, one of those sudden halts in life which we all
experience,--an instant,--when time and the world seem to stand still,
as though to permit us easy breathing; a brief space,--in which we are
allowed to stop and wonder awhile at the strange unaccountable force
within us, that enables us to stand with such calm, smiling audacity, on
our small pin's point of the present, between the wide dark gaps of past
and future; a small hush,--in which the gigantic engines of the universe
appear to revolve no more, and the immortal Soul of man itself is
subjected and over-ruled by supreme and eternal Thought. Drifting away
on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and
dreamland, the watcher of the midnight sun gave himself up to the half
painful, half delicious sense of being drawn in, absorbed, and lost in
infinite imaginings, when the intense stillness around him was broken by
the sound of a voice singing, a full, rich contralto, that rang through
the air with the clearness of a golden bell. The sweet liquid notes were
those of an old Norwegian mountain melody, one of those wildly pathetic
_folk-songs_ that seem to hold all the sorrow, wonder, wistfulness, and
indescribable yearning of a heart too full for other speech than music.
He started to his feet and looked around him for the singer. There was
no one visible. The amber streaks in the sky were leaping into crimson
flame; the Fjord glowed like the burning lake of Dante's vision; one
solitary sea-gull winged its graceful, noiseless flight far above, its
white pinions shimmering like jewels as it crossed the radiance of the
heavens. Other sign of animal life there was none. Still the hidden
voice rippled on in a stream of melody, and the listener stood amazed
and enchanted at the roundness and distinctness of every note that fell
from the lips of the unseen vocalist.

"A woman's voice," he thought; "but where is the woman?"

Puzzled, he looked to the right and left, then out to the shining Fjord,
half expecting to see some fisher-maiden rowing along, and singing as
she rowed, but there was no sign of any living creature. While he
waited, the voice suddenly ceased, and the song was replaced by the
sharp grating of a keel on the beach. Turning in the direction of this
sound, he perceived a boat being pushed out by invisible hands towards
the water's edge from a rocky cave, that jutted upon the Fjord, and,
full of curiosity, he stepped towards the arched entrance, when,--all
suddenly and unexpectedly,--a girl sprang out from the dark interior,
and standing erect in her boat, faced the intruder. A girl of about
nineteen, she seemed, taller than most women,--with a magnificent
uncovered mass of hair, the color of the midnight sunshine, tumbled over
her shoulders, and flashing against her flushed cheeks and dazzlingly
fair skin. Her deep blue eyes had an astonished and certainly indignant
expression in them, while he, utterly unprepared for such a vision of
loveliness at such a time and in such a place, was for a moment taken
aback and at a loss for words. Recovering his habitual self-possession
quickly, however, he raised his hat, and, pointing to the boat, which
was more than half way out of the cavern, said simply--

"May I assist you?"

She was silent, eyeing him with a keen glance which had something in it
of disfavor and suspicion.

"I suppose she doesn't understand English," he thought, "and I can't
speak a word of Norwegian. I must talk by signs."

And forthwith he went through a labored pantomime of gesture,
sufficiently ludicrous in itself, yet at the same time expressive of his
meaning. The girl broke into a laugh--a laugh of sweet amusement which
brought a thousand new sparkles of light into her lovely eyes.

"That is very well done," she observed graciously, speaking English with
something of a foreign accent. "Even the Lapps would understand you, and
they are very stupid, poor things!"

Half vexed by her laughter, and feeling that he was somehow an object of
ridicule to this tall, bright-haired maiden, he ceased his pantomimic
gestures abruptly and stood looking at her with a slight flush of
embarrassment on his features.

"I know your language," she resumed quietly, after a brief pause, in
which she had apparently considered the stranger's appearance and
general bearing. "It was rude of me not to have answered you at once.
You can help me if you will. The keel has caught among the pebbles, but
we can easily move it between us." And, jumping lightly out of her boat,
she grasped its edge firmly with her strong white hands, exclaiming
gaily, as she did so, "Push!"

Thus adjured, he lost no time in complying with her request, and, using
his great strength and muscular force to good purpose, the light little
craft was soon well in the water, swaying to and fro as though with
impatience to be gone. The girl sprang to her seat, discarding his
eagerly proffered assistance, and, taking both oars, laid them in their
respective rowlocks, and seemed about to start, when she paused and
asked abruptly--

"Are you a sailor?"

He smiled. "Not I! Do I remind you of one?"

"You are strong, and you manage a boat as though you were accustomed to
the work. Also you look as if you had been at sea."

"Rightly guessed!" he replied, still smiling; "I certainly _have_ been
at sea; I have been coasting all about your lovely land. My yacht went
across to Seiland this afternoon."

She regarded him more intently, and observed, with the critical eye of a
woman, the refined taste displayed in his dress, from the very cut of
his loose travelling coat, to the luxurious rug of fine fox-shins, that
lay so carelessly cast on the shore at a little distance from him. Then
she gave a gesture of hauteur and half-contempt.

"You have a yacht? Oh! then you are a gentleman. You do nothing for your
living?"

"Nothing, indeed!" and he shrugged his shoulders with a mingled air of
weariness and self-pity, "except one thing--I live!"

"Is that hard work?" she inquired wonderingly.

"Very."

They were silent then, and the girl's face grew serious as she rested on
her oars, and still surveyed him with a straight, candid gaze, that,
though earnest and penetrating, had nothing of boldness in it. It was
the look of one in whose past there were no secrets--the look of a child
who is satisfied with the present and takes no thought for the future.
Few women look so after they have entered their teens. Social artifice,
affectation, and the insatiate vanity that modern life encourages in the
feminine nature--all these things soon do away with the pellucid
clearness and steadfastness of the eye--the beautiful, true, untamed
expression, which, though so rare, is, when seen infinitely more
bewitching than all the bright arrows of coquetry and sparkling
invitation that flash from the glances of well-bred society dames, who
have taken care to educate their eyes if not their hearts. This girl was
evidently not trained properly; had she been so, she would have dropped
a curtain over those wide, bright windows of her soul; she would have
remembered that she was alone with a strange man at midnight--at
midnight, though the sun shone; she would have simpered and feigned
embarrassment, even if she could not feel it. As it happened, she did
nothing of the kind, only her expression softened and became more
wistful and earnest, and when she spoke again her voice was mellow with
a suave gentleness, that had something in it of compassion.

"If you do not love life itself," she said, "you love the beautiful
things of life, do you not? See yonder! There is what we call the
meeting of night and morning. One is glad to be alive at such a moment.
Look quickly! The light soon fades."

She pointed towards the east. Her companion gazed in that direction, and
uttered an exclamation,--almost a shout,--of wonder and admiration.
Within the space of the past few minutes the aspect of the heavens had
completely changed. The burning scarlet and violet hues had all melted
into a transparent yet brilliant shade of pale mauve,--as delicate as
the inner tint of a lilac blossom,--and across this stretched two
wing-shaped gossamer clouds of watery green, fringed with soft primrose.
Between these cloud-wings, as opaline in lustre as those of a
dragon-fly, the face of the sun shone like a shield of polished gold,
while his rays, piercing spear-like through the varied tints of emerald,
brought an unearthly radiance over the landscape--a lustre as though the
moon were, in some strange way, battling with the sun for mastery over
the visible universe though, looking southward, she could dimly be
perceived, the ghost of herself--a poor, fainting, pallid goddess,--a
perishing Diana.

Bringing his glance down from the skies, the young man turned it to the
face of the maiden near him, and was startled at her marvellous
beauty--beauty now heightened by the effect of the changeful colors that
played around her. The very boat in which she sat glittered with a
bronze-like, metallic brightness as it heaved gently to and fro on the
silvery green water; the midnight sunshine bathed the falling glory of
her long hair, till each thick tress, each clustering curl, appeared to
emit an amber spark of light. The strange, weird effect of the sky
seemed to have stolen into her eyes, making them shine with witch-like
brilliancy,--the varied radiance flashing about her brought into strong
relief the pureness of her profile, drawing as with a fine pencil the
outlines of her noble forehead, sweet mouth, and rounded chin. It
touched the scarlet of her bodice, and brightened the quaint old silver
clasps she wore at her waist and throat, till she seemed no longer an
earthly being, but more like some fair wondering sprite from the
legendary Norse kingdom of _Alfheim_, the "abode of the Luminous Genii."

She was gazing upwards,--heavenwards,--and her expression was one of
rapt and almost devotional intensity. Thus she remained for some
moments, motionless as the picture of an expectant angel painted by
Raffaele or Correggio; then reluctantly and with a deep sigh she turned
her eyes towards earth again. In so doing she met the fixed and too
visibly admiring gaze of her companion. She started, and a wave of vivid
color flushed her cheeks. Quickly recovering her serenity, however, she
saluted him slightly, and, moving her oars in unison, was on the point
of departure.

Stirred by an impulse he could not resist, he laid one hand detainingly
on the rim of her boat.

"Are you going now?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows in some little surprise and smiled.

"Going?" she repeated. "Why, yes. I shall be late in getting home as it
is."

"Stop a moment," he said eagerly, feeling that he could not let this
beautiful creature leave him as utterly as a midsummer night's dream
without some clue as to her origin and destination. "Will you not tell
me your name?"

She drew herself erect with a look of indignation.

"Sir, I do not know you. The maidens of Norway do not give their names
to strangers."

"Pardon me," he replied, somewhat abashed. "I mean no offense. We have
watched the midnight sun together, and--and--I thought--"

He paused, feeling very foolish, and unable to conclude his sentence.

She looked at him demurely from under her long, curling lashes.

"You will often find a peasant girl on the shores of the Altenfjord
watching the midnight sun at the same time as yourself," she said, and
there was a suspicion of laughter in her voice. "It is not unusual. It
is not even necessary that you should remember so little a thing."

"Necessary or not, I shall never forget it," he said with sudden
impetuosity. "You are no peasant! Come; if I give you my name will you
still deny me yours?"

Her delicate brows drew together in a frown of haughty and decided
refusal. "No names please my ears save those that are familiar," she
said, with intense coldness. "We shall not meet again. Farewell!"

And without further word or look, she leaned gracefully to the oars, and
pulling with a long, steady, resolute stroke, the little boat darted
away as lightly and swiftly as a skimming swallow out on the shimmering
water, he stood gazing after it till it became a distant speck sparkling
like a diamond in the light of sky and wave, and when he could no more
watch it with unassisted eyes, he took up his field glass and followed
its course attentively. He saw it cutting along as straightly as an
arrow, then suddenly it dipped round to the westward, apparently making
straight for some shelving rocks, that projected far into the Fjord. It
reached them; it grew less and less--it disappeared. At the same time
the lustre of the heavens gave way to a pale pearl-like uniform grey
tint, that stretched far and wide, folding up as in a mantle all the
regal luxury of the Sun-king's palace. The subtle odor and delicate
chill of the coming dawn stole freshly across the water. A light haze
rose and obscured the opposite islands. Something of the tender
melancholy of autumn, though it was late June, toned down the aspect of
the before brilliant landscape. A lark rose swiftly from its nest in an
adjacent meadow, and, soaring higher and higher, poured from its tiny
throat a cascade of delicious melody. The midnight sun no longer shone
at midnight; his face smiled with a sobered serenity through the faint
early mists of approaching morning.




CHAPTER II.

"Viens donc--je te chanterai des chansons que les esprits des
cimetieres m'ont apprises!"
MATURIN.


"Baffled!" he exclaimed, with a slight vexed laugh, as the boat vanished
from his sight. "By a woman, too! Who would have thought it?"

Who would have thought it, indeed! Sir Philip Bruce-Errington, Baronet,
the wealthy and desirable parti for whom many match-making mothers had
stood knee-deep in the chilly though sparkling waters of society,
ardently plying rod and line with patient persistence, vainly hoping to
secure him as a husband for one of their highly proper and passionless
daughters,--he, the admired, long-sought-after "eligible," was suddenly
rebuffed, flouted--by whom? A stray princess, or a peasant. He vaguely
wondered, as he lit a cigar and strolled up and down on the shore,
meditating, with a puzzled, almost annoyed expression on his handsome
features. He was not accustomed to slights of any kind, however
trifling; his position being commanding and enviable enough to attract
flattery and friendship from most people. He was the only son of a
baronet as renowned for eccentricity as for wealth. He had been the
spoilt darling of his mother; and now, both his parents being dead, he
was alone in the world, heir to his father's revenues, and entire master
of his own actions. And as part of the penalty he had to pay for being
rich and good-looking to boot, he was so much run after by women that he
found it hard to understand the haughty indifference with which he had
just been treated by one of the most fair, if not the fairest of her
sex. He was piqued, and his _amour propre_ was wounded.

"I'm sure my question was harmless enough," he mused, half crossly, "She
might have answered it."

He glanced out impatiently over the Fjord. There was no sign of his
returning yacht as yet.

"What a time those fellows are!" he said to himself. "If the pilot were
not on board, I should begin to think they had run the _Eulalie_
aground."

He finished his cigar and threw the end of it into the water; then he
stood moodily watching the ripples as they rolled softly up and caressed
the shining brown shore at his feet, thinking all the while of that
strange girl, so wonderfully lovely in face and form, so graceful and
proud of bearing, with her great blue eyes and masses of dusky gold
hair.

His meeting with her was a sort of adventure in its way--the first of
the kind he had had for some time. He was subject to fits of weariness
or caprice, and it was in one of these that he had suddenly left London
in the height of the season, and had started for Norway on a yachting
cruise with three chosen companions, one of whom, George Lorimer, once
an Oxford fellow-student, was now his "chum"--the Pythias to his Damon,
the _fidus Achates_ of his closest confidence. Through the unexpected
wakening up of energy in the latter young gentleman, who was usually of
a most sleepy and indolent disposition, he happened to be quite alone on
this particular occasion, though, as a general rule, he was accompanied
in his rambles by one if not all three of his friends. Utter solitude
was with him a rare occurrence, and his present experience of it had
chanced in this wise. Lorimer the languid, Lorimer the lazy, Lorimer who
had remained blandly unmoved and drowsy through all the magnificent
panorama of the Norwegian coast, including the Sogne Fjord and the
toppling peaks of the Justedal glaciers; Lorimer who had slept
peacefully in a hammock on deck, even while the yacht was passing under
the looming splendors of Melsnipa; Lorimer, now that he had arrived at
the Alton Fjord, then at its loveliest in the full glory of the
continuous sunshine, developed a new turn of mind, and began to show
sudden and abnormal interest in the scenery. In this humor he expressed
his desire to "take a sight" of the midnight sun from the island of
Seiland, and also declared his resolve to try the nearly impossible
ascent of the great Jedke glacier.

Errington laughed at the idea. "Don't tell me," he said, "that you are
going in for climbing. And do you suppose I believe that you are
interested--_you_ of all people--in the heavenly bodies?"

"Why not?" asked Lorimer, with a candid smile. "I'm not in the least
interested in earthly bodies, except my own. The sun's a jolly fellow. I
sympathize with him in his present condition. He's in his cups--that's
what's the matter--and he can't be persuaded to go to bed. I know his
feelings perfectly; and I want to survey his gloriously inebriated face
from another point of view. Don't laugh, Phil; I'm in earnest! And I
really have quite a curiosity to try my skill in amateur mountaineering.
Jedke's the very place for a first effort. It offers difficulties,
and"--this with a slight yawn--"I like to surmount difficulties; it's
rather amusing."

His mind was so evidently set upon the excursion, that Sir Philip made
no attempt to dissuade him from it, but excused himself from
accompanying the party on the plea that he wanted to finish a sketch he
had recently begun. So that when the _Eulalie_ got up her steam, weighed
anchor, and swept gracefully away towards the coast of the adjacent
islands, her owner was left, at his desire, to the seclusion of a quiet
nook on the shore of the Altenfjord, where he succeeded in making a bold
and vivid picture of the scene before him. The colors of the sky had,
however, defied his palette, and after one or two futile attempts to
transfer to his canvas a few of the gorgeous tints that illumed the
landscape, he gave up the task in despair, and resigned himself to the
_dolce far niente_ of absolute enjoyment. From his half pleasing, half
melancholy reverie the voice of the unknown maiden had startled him, and
now,--now she had left him to resume it if he chose,--left him, in chill
displeasure, with a cold yet brilliant flash of something like scorn in
her wonderful eyes.

Since her departure the scenery, in some unaccountable way, seemed less
attractive to him, the songs of the birds, who were all awake, fell on
inattentive ears; he was haunted by her face and voice, and he was,
moreover, a little out of humor with himself for having been such a
blunderer as to give her offense and thus leave an unfavorable
impression on her mind.

"I suppose I _was_ rude," he considered after a while. "She seemed to
think so, at any rate. By Jove! what a crushing look she gave me! A
peasant? Not she! If she had said she was an empress I shouldn't have
been much surprised. But a mere common peasant, with that regal figure
and those white hands! I don't believe it. Perhaps our pilot, Valdemar,
knows who she is; I must ask him."

All at once he bethought himself of the cave whence she had emerged. It
was close at hand--a natural grotto, arched and apparently lofty. He
resolved to explore it. Glancing at his watch he saw it was not yet one
o'clock in the morning, yet the voice of the cuckoo called shrilly from
the neighboring hills, and a circling group of swallows flitted around
him, their lovely wings glistening like jewels in the warm light of the
ever-wakeful sun. Going to the entrance of the cave, he looked in. It
was formed of rough rock, hewn out by the silent work of the water, and
its floor was strewn thick with loose pebbles and polished stones.
Entering it, he was able to walk upright for some few paces, then
suddenly it seemed to shrink in size and to become darker. The light
from the opening gradually narrowed into a slender stream too small for
him to see clearly where he was going, thereupon he struck a fusee. At
first he could observe no sign of human habitation, not even a rope, or
chain, or hook, to intimate that it was a customary shelter for a boat.
The fusee went out quickly, and he lit another. Looking more carefully
and closely about him, he perceived on a projecting shelf of rock, a
small antique lamp, Etruscan in shape, made of iron and wrought with
curious letters. There was oil in it, and a half-burnt wick; it had
evidently been recently used. He availed himself at once of this useful
adjunct to his explorations, and lighting it, was able by the clear and
steady flame it emitted, to see everything very distinctly. Right before
him was an uneven flight of steps leading down to a closed door.