Part 76 (1/2)
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.”