Fairy Circles Part 11

Goldemar's eyes shone as he looked approvingly on the boy; then he bent towards the lady and said, "I light the lamps again!" at the same time breathing into her eyes, so that the sight came back immediately.

The newly-opened eyes shone with joy and grat.i.tude, and in a burst of weeping she sank into Kuno's arms, while the royal pair and their train looked on in deep emotion.

"Farewell then, Kuno," said King Goldemar. "Thou hast found what was needed to make thee happy--a mother's heart. We have kept our word.

Shouldst thou ever in thy life again need our help, thou wilt find us ready."

With a loving look the King held out his hand, and the Queen and the other dwarfs likewise took an affectionate leave of the boy before returning to their kingdom under ground. Just as they were going through the castle garden towards the entrance in the side of the rock, Eckbert returned from a drinking bout.

"I have come upon these dull fellows unexpectedly," he said, grinding his teeth, when he noticed the procession of dwarfs. "Now they shall suffer for that box on the ear, and for my mother's blindness. I will cut off the last clown's head and throw it in at that stupid Kuno's window."

He slipped softly behind the procession. When they reached the door in the rock, Eckbert waited till the last had put his foot on the threshold, then he sprang forward and raised his sword. The same instant the heavy rock door, which so artfully closed the opening, shut to and crushed Eckbert's head to atoms. Without uttering a sound he fell back, and his blood stained the snow.

The next morning offered a sad spectacle to Lady Von Allenstein's newly-restored sight. It is true, Eckbert had been an undutiful son, but still it was her child, her own flesh and blood, that now lay before her a mangled corpse. The place where he had been found with his sword unsheathed made Kuno suspect whose hand had caused his death; but he was silent on this as on all that concerned his dwarf friends.

Eckbert was buried with great pomp, but no eyes shed tears at the ceremony save those of his mother and of the good forgiving Kuno. From this time Lady Von Allenstein turned the whole affection of her enn.o.bled heart towards Kuno, who repaid her love with the most heartfelt grat.i.tude; and no one who did not know their relationship would have thought, to see them together, that they were anything but mother and son.

Winter and spring were past, and the warm summer weather had come.

On a bright summer evening the horn of the watchman on the tower announced a troop of hors.e.m.e.n, and as they drew near with the sound of trumpets Kuno's sharp eye recognised in their floating banner his father's colours.

He had long since recovered, but instead of returning to his castle he had once more offered his strong arm and brave heart in service to his imperial lord. The war was now ended, and the Earl, whom they had long counted dead, had returned, covered with scars and with honours, to clasp his beloved son in his arms.

Lady Von Allenstein still lived in the castle, and presided over it as before, but she was served now from love and not from fear. When she died in a good old age, Kuno knelt at her side; her cold hand rested on his head, and her dying lips spoke words of love and blessing over her adopted son.

The Flower of Iceland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HELGA AT HER MOTHER'S FEET.]

A substantial farm-house stood many, many years ago on the slope of a hill in bleak and frozen Iceland. The owner, who had spent his youth as a sailor in distant climes, had at last obeyed his dying father's summons, and exchanged the palms and orange groves of southern lands for the feeble sunlight and cold lava-fields of his native island. But as a living souvenir of those happy regions he brought home a young and beautiful wife, whose dark and eloquent eyes still shone in the memory of all who had beheld them, long after they had been closed in the last sleep.

"Marietta," her husband had said before the priest had joined their hands in marriage, "have you considered well what you are renouncing when you promise to follow me as my wife? Here in your country an eternal spring reigns, sweet with the fragrance of flowers and musical with the warbling of birds, while the Italian sky shines in never-fading blue. On my island you will find none of these things. A pale sun, a grey sky overhead, and all around barren heaths and ice--ice and snow wherever you look; none but the Icelander can think this island beautiful."

"But you will be there," answered Marietta; "and could I wish for any home but yours?"

So she had gone with him to the far north.

They had one child, a lovely little girl, who bore the name of Helga; she must be a true daughter of Iceland, and to this even her name must witness. But her foreign descent was not to be hid; true, she had the fair skin and beautiful flaxen hair of a northern girl, but her eyes were as dark and mysterious as her mother's.

The Icelanders have no flowers; they know of their beauty only by the tales of their countrymen who have seen them on their travels; but every one who looked into little Helga's beautiful face thought that flowers must look like that, and thus she was called "the Flower of Iceland."

Fair Helga loved her grave father, but she loved still more her beautiful and gentle mother, by whose side she spent most of her time.

Every spring the father set out for the coast with a few servants to get fish for the year's household provisions; for though he dearly loved Marietta and his home, the sea still exercised the old spell on his heart. In summer and autumn he was accustomed to go to the distant trading places along the coast, there to exchange the wool of his large and well-conditioned flocks for the valuable products of foreign lands, with which he loved to please and adorn his dear ones.

At such times Helga would sit at her mother's feet, listening as she told in the soft, sweet sounds of her native tongue about the blue sky and the warm golden sunlight of Italy, of the beautiful flowers and evergreen woods, and of the fine mild nights when the young girls would dance in the moonlight to the sound of the mandoline, and pleasure and melody reigned over land and sea.

Ah! how beautiful that country must be; and here everything was so different. No dance, no song, either from human lips or from the throat of a bird. Helga had never even heard the sheep give a cheerful bleat; everything was stupid and grave; the silence of death was Nature's language here.

Then Helga's dark eye would wander away over Iceland's wide and desert heaths, over the lava-fields that stretched for miles, and which had buried the freshness of nature under their stiff mantle of mourning.

She gazed on those giant ice-mountains, untrod by human foot, which rise like monuments of death, with thick mist-veils about their brow.

Even when a sunbeam happens to pierce the cloudy covering, the colossal piles of ice shine in the pale light like sarcophagi in a vault. Then Helga would shudder and think with ardent longing on her dear mother's native land.

And she? Ah, her husband had been right. In spite of her love for him, she pined for the sunny valleys of her childhood, all the more as she never told her husband of the grief that gnawed at her heart, for he placed his Iceland before all the paradises of the world. Ten years had scarcely gone by till Marietta's warm heart lay still beneath the sod.

Helga thought her heart would break when they carried her loved mother out towards the hill, whence she had so often looked longingly out over the sea, watching the blue waves as they hastened towards the beautiful but distant south.

"When you bury me," said the dying woman to her husband, "lay me so that my face may look towards Italy." And they did as she wished.

Helga often sat now on the grave, herself the only flower that brightened it; and along with her dear mother's image those distant countries came vividly before her mind, as she had heard them described as long as she could remember.

A distant relation now came to take charge of the housekeeping. She had willingly left her home, bringing with her her only son, in compliance with her rich cousin's request. The stern old woman had no sympathy with Helga's longings, and counted her descriptions of distant lands as fairy tales; nothing, she thought, could be more beautiful than Iceland. But Olaffson, her boy, who was only a few years older than the little orphan, became Helga's eager listener.

With equal delight he looked on her beautiful face and listened to her stories; the grave blue eyes, which were usually as cold as the glaciers of his native island, would kindle as she went on, and when Helga stopped he would say, "I will be a sailor, and travel to those countries to see if they are really so beautiful!"

"But you will take me with you?"

"Oh yes, of course."

Thus the years went by, and the time drew quickly on when the tree, the seed of which had been sown by Helga's hand, bore fruit. Olaffson was no longer a boy, and he decided on going to sea. The head of the house willingly gave his consent, and the time of parting came.

Fair Helga's cheek was pale. Olaffson fancied that it was the separation that troubled her so deeply, and that thought sweetened the bitter hour to him. But ah! it was only her grief at having to stay at home on the cold and barren island, and at not being allowed to see the countries to which, as she thought, she had a much better right than Olaffson.

Another year had gone. Olaffson had come home and given an account of all that he had seen. The hour of parting again drew near. Early next morning he was to set out on a second and longer journey, and in spite of Helga's tears and entreaties to be allowed to go, her father and Olaffson had only shaken their heads and laughed at her childishness.

It was evening. She went with Olaffson to the grave on the hill, there to hear once more about the wonders of foreign lands. Hour after hour flew by; she could not tire of the delightful theme.

"Well, Helga," Olaffson at last concluded, "it is indeed as beautiful in those countries as your mother used to tell you; almost more beautiful--yes, much more beautiful; still, it is not Iceland. There is no place so beautiful as our native land--no place."

Helga looked at him incredulously.

"You may believe me, Helga," he said. "Look; it is now midnight. In those countries there has been night, deep night for hours; the sun has long ago forsaken them, but it loves our island better, for it lingers longer with us. Just look over yonder. It has just sunk into the sea, and on the rosy western sky it paints in silvery outline the beautiful leafy forests which are denied to our soil. Only look how they nod their gleaming heads; does it not seem as if you could hear a mysterious rustling among their branches? And are not the white clouds above like eagles circling over their summits? And now look at the clear light around you! The nights there are as dark as the consciences of criminals; our nights are like the heart of a pious child--light, clear, and still."

"But it is so cold here--so cold that my very heart freezes within me," said Helga complainingly.

"But the cold is bracing," said Olaffson. "There, I found men weak, cowardly, and effeminate. I could tell you many a sad story to show this. Now look at your own land, Flower of Iceland, for you belong to us; we are honest, brave, and strong as our fathers were, and our sons will be after us, and that we owe to Iceland and its glaciers, its cold but strengthening climate. I tell you, fair Helga, there is but one Iceland, as there is but one flower in it."

Early next morning Olaffson was to set out. Helga's father said he would go down to the coast also with his servants, for it was the time of the yearly fishing, so that they might as well travel together so far.

The farewell was short and silent. Helga struggled to keep back her tears when she saw how merrily they all sprang into the saddle, and when she thought of Olaffson's words about Iceland's brave people; for she must show herself worthy of her race. But her dark eyes rested so longingly on her father's face that he knew what was pa.s.sing in her heart.

"Come, Helga," said he, stooping down from his horse, "you may go with us as far as the hill where the lava-fields begin." Then he took her up before him on the saddle, and soon the horses were off at a canter.

Soon they reached the hill at the foot of which the lava-fields began, whose dark lines stretched for miles along the horizon.