Thelma Part 3

"Don't go on--please don't!" he implored. "I can't stand it--I really can't! Incipient verse-mania is too much for me. Forest-empress, sea-G.o.ddess, sun-angel--by Jove! what next? You are evidently in a very bad way. If I remember rightly, you had a flask of that old green Chartreuse with you. Ah! that accounts for it! Nice stuff, but a little too strong."

Errington laughed, and, unabashed by his friend's raillery, proceeded to relate with much vivacity and graphic fervor the occurrences of the morning. Lorimer listened patiently with a forbearing smile on his open, ruddy countenance. When he had heard everything he looked up and inquired calmly--

"This is not a yarn, is it?"

"A yarn!" exclaimed Philip. "Do you think I would invent such a thing?"

"Can't say," returned Lorimer imperturbably. "You are quite capable of it. It's a very creditable crammer, due to Chartreuse. Might have been designed by Victor Hugo; it's in his style. Scene, Norway--midnight.

Mysterious maiden steals out of a cave and glides away in a boat over the water; man, the hero, goes into cave, finds a stone coffin, says--'Qu'est-ce que c'est? Dieu! C'est la mort!' Spectacle affreux!

Staggers back perspiring; meets mad dwarf with torch; mad dwarf talks a good deal--mad people always do,--then yells and runs away. Man comes out of cave and--and--goes home to astonish his friends; one of them won't be astonished,--that's me!"

"I don't care," said Errington. "It's a true story for all that. Only, I say, don't talk of it before the others; let's keep our own counsel--"

"No poachers allowed on the Sun-Angel Manor!" interrupted Lorimer gravely. Philip went on without heeding him.

"I'll question Valdemar Svensen after breakfast. He knows everybody about here. Come and have a smoke on deck when I give you the sign, and we'll cross-examine him."

Lorimer still looked incredulous. "What's the good of it?" he inquired languidly. "Even if it's all true you had much better leave this G.o.ddess, or whatever you call her, alone, especially if she has any mad connections. What do _you_ want with her?"

"Nothing!" declared Errington, though hiss color heightened. "Nothing, I a.s.sure you! It's just a matter of curiosity with me. I should like to know who she is--that's all! The affair won't go any further."

"How do you know?" and Lorimer began to brush his stiff curly hair with a sort of vicious vigor. "How can you tell? I'm not a spiritualist, nor any sort of a humbug at all, I hope, but I sometimes indulge in presentiments. Before we started on this cruise, I was haunted by that dismal old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens--"

'The King's daughter of Norroway 'Tis thou maun bring her hame!'

"And here you have found her, or so it appears. What's to come of it, I wonder?"

"Nothing's to come of it; nothing _will_ come of it!" laughed Philip.

"As I told you, she said she was a peasant. There's the breakfast-bell!

Make haste, old boy, I'm as hungry as a hunter!"

And he left his friend to finish dressing, and entered the saloon, where he greeted his two other companions, Alec, or, as he was oftener called, Sandy Macfarlane, and Pierre Duprez; the former an Oxford student,--the latter a young fellow whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and with whom he had kept up a constant and friendly intercourse. A greater contrast than these two presented could scarcely be imagined. Macfarlane was tall and ungainly, with large loose joints that seemed to protrude angularly out of him in every direction,--Duprez was short, slight and wiry, with a dapper and by no means ungraceful figure. The one had formal _gauche_ manners, a never-to-be-eradicated Glasgow accent, and a slow, infinitely tedious method of expressing himself,--the other was full of restless movement and pantomimic gesture, and being proud of his English, plunged into that language recklessly, making it curiously light and flippant, though picturesque, as he went. Macfarlane was destined to become a s.h.i.+ning light of the established Church of Scotland, and therefore took life very seriously,--Duprez was the spoilt only child of an eminent French banker, and had very little to do but enjoy himself, and that he did most thoroughly, without any calculation or care for the future. On all points of taste and opinion they differed widely; but there was no doubt about their both being good-hearted fellows, without any affectation of abnormal vice or virtue.

"So you did not climb Jedke after all!" remarked Errington laughingly, as they seated themselves at the breakfast table.

"My friend, what would you!" cried Duprez. "I have not said that I will climb it; no! I never say that I will do anything, because I'm not sure of myself. How can I be? It is that _cher enfant_, Lorimer, that said such brave words! See! . . . we arrive; we behold the sh.o.r.e--all black, great, vast! . . . rocks like needles, and, higher than all, this most fierce Jedke--bah! what a name!--straight as the spire of a cathedral.

One must be a fly to crawl up it, and we, we are not flies--_ma foi_!

no! Lorimer, he laugh, he yawn--so! He say, 'not for me to-day; I very much thank you!' And then, we watch the sun. Ah! that was grand, glorious, beautiful!" And Duprez kissed the tips of his fingers in ecstacy.

"What did _you_ think about it, Sandy?" asked Sir Philip.

"I didna think much," responded Macfarlane, shortly. "It's no sae grand a sight as a sunset in Skye. And it's an uncanny business to see the sun losin' a' his poonctooality, and remainin' stock still, as it were, when it's his plain duty to set below the horizon. Mysel', I think it's been fair over-rated. It's unnatural an' oot o' the common, say what ye like."

"Of course it is," agreed Lorimer, who just then sauntered in from his cabin. "Nature _is_ most unnatural. I always thought so. Tea for me, Phil, please; coffee wakes me up too suddenly. I say, what's the programme to-day?"

"Fis.h.i.+ng in the Alten," answered Errington promptly.

"That suits me perfectly," said Lorimer, as he leisurely sipped his tea.

"I'm an excellent fisher. I hold the line and generally forget to bait it. Then,--while it trails harmlessly in the water, I doze; thus both the fish and I are happy."

"And this evening," went on Errington, "we must return the minister's call. He's been to the yacht twice. We're bound to go out of common politeness."

"Spare us, good Lord!" groaned Lorimer.

"What a delightfully fat man is that good religious!" cried Duprez. "A living proof of the healthiness of Norway!"

"He's not a native," put in Macfarlane; "he's frae Yorks.h.i.+re. He's only been a matter of three months here, filling the place o' the settled meenister who's awa' for a change of air."

"He's a precious specimen of a humbug, anyhow," sighed Lorimer drearily.

"However, I'll be civil to him as long as he doesn't ask me to hear him preach. At that suggestion I'll fight him. He's soft enough to bruise easily."

"Ye're just too lazy to fight onybody," declared Macfarlane.

Lorimer smiled sweetly. "Thanks, awfully! I dare say you're right. I've never found it worth while as yet to exert myself in any particular direction. No one has asked me to exert myself; no one wants me to exert myself; therefore, why should I?"

"Don't ye want to get on in the world?" asked Macfarlane, almost brusquely.

"Dear me, no! What an exhausting idea! Get on in the world--what for? I have five hundred a year, and when my mother goes over to the majority (long distant be that day, for I'm very fond of the dear old lady), I shall have five thousand--more than enough to satisfy any sane man who doesn't want to speculate on the Stock Exchange. _Your_ case, my good Mac, is different. You will be a celebrated Scotch divine. You will preach to a crowd of pious numskulls about predestination, and so forth.

You will be stump-orator for the securing of seats in paradise. Now, now, keep calm!--don't mind me. It's only a figure of speech! And the numskulls will call you a 'rare powerful rousin' preacher'--isn't that the way they go on? and when you die--for die you must, most unfortunately--they will give you a three-cornered block of granite (if they can make up their minds to part with the necessary bawbees) with your name prettily engraved thereon. That's all very nice; it suits some people. It wouldn't suit me."

"What _would_ suit you?" queried Errington. "You find everything more or less of a bore."

"Ah, my good little boy!" broke in Duprez. "Paris is the place for you.

You should live in Paris. Of that you would never fatigue yourself."

"Too much absinthe, secret murder and suicidal mania," returned Lorimer, meditatively. "That was a neat idea about the coffins though. I never hoped to dine off a coffin."

"Ah! you mean the Taverne de l'Enfer?" exclaimed Duprez. "Yes; the divine waitresses wore winding sheets, and the wine was served in imitation skulls. Excellent! I remember; the tables were shaped like coffins."

"Gude Lord Almighty!" piously murmured Macfarlane. "What a fearsome sicht!"

As he p.r.o.nounced these words with an unusually marked accent, Duprez looked inquiring.

"What does our Macfarlane say?"

"He says it must have been a 'fearsome sicht,'" repeated Lorimer, with even a stronger accent than Sanby's own, "which, _mon cher_ Pierre, means all the horrors in your language; _affreux_, _epouvantable_, _navrant_--anything you like, that is sufficiently terrible."

"_Mais, point du tout_!" cried Duprez energetically. "It was charming!

It made us laugh at death--so much better than to cry! And there was a delicious child in a winding-sheet; brown curls, laughing eyes and little mouth; ha ha! but she was well worth kissing!"

"I'd rather follow ma own funeral, than kiss a la.s.s in a winding-sheet,"

said Sandy, in solemn and horrified tones. "It's just awfu' to think on."

"But, see, my friend," persisted Duprez, "you would not be permitted to follow your own funeral, not possible,--_voila_! You _are_ permitted to kiss the pretty one in the winding-sheet. It _is_ possible. Behold the difference!"

"Never mind the Taverne de l'Enfer just now," said Errington, who had finished his breakfast hurriedly. "It's time for you fellows to get your fis.h.i.+ng toggery on. I'm off to speak to the pilot."

And away he went, followed more slowly by Lorimer, who, though he pretended indifference, was rather curious to know more, if possible, concerning his friend's adventure of the morning. They found the pilot, Valdemar Svensen, leaning at his ease against the idle wheel, with his face turned towards the eastern sky. He was a stalwart specimen of Norse manhood, tall and strongly built, with thoughtful, dignified features, and keen, clear hazel eyes. His chestnut hair, plentifully sprinkled with gray, cl.u.s.tered thickly over a broad brow, that was deeply furrowed with many a line of anxious and speculative thought, and the forcible brown hand that rested lightly on the spokes of the wheel, told its own tale of hard and honest labor. Neither wife nor child, nor living relative had Valdemar; the one pa.s.sion of his heart was the sea. Sir Philip Errington had engaged him at Christiansund, hearing of him there as a man to whom the intricacies of the Fjords, and the dangers of rock-bound coasts, were more familiar than a straight road on dry lake, and since then the management of the _Eulalie_ had been entirely entrusted to him. Though an eminently practical sailor, he was half a mystic, and believed in the wildest legends of his land with more implicit faith than many so-called Christians believe in their sacred doctrines. He doffed his red cap respectfully now as Errington and Lorimer approached, smilingly wis.h.i.+ng them "a fair day." Sir Philip offered him a cigar, and, coming to the point at once, asked abruptly--