Gudrid the Fair Part 10

Thorbeorn of Stockness died of the winter sickness the winter before Thorwald sailed for Wineland. Th.o.r.e himself had been very sick too, but he recovered and was almost himself that summer. Not altogether so, for he had lost his lightness of heart, and with that his decision and blunt common sense. Gudrid, who had fought, as it seemed to her, against fate, and prevailed, was unhappy that he should care so little to be with her. She did not know that he avoided her. But it was so.

He spent most of his time at Brattalithe, where he had taken a great fancy for Thorstan. He did not tell her, and Gudrid did not know, what he and Thorstan could have to say to each other--but the two were great friends. The fact of the matter was that Th.o.r.e had now got it into his head that Gudrid had cast a spell upon both himself and Thorstan, and that the prediction concerning her was less prophecy than a gift of magic power. He found that Thorstan would let him talk about his hard fate by the hour together--nay, more, he found that Thorstan did not at all avoid being cast in the same lot. Thorstan, indeed, was quite open about it. "I have so much love in me for Gudrid," he said, "that you may say whatever you please about her to me, and I shall hear you gladly. Talk evil of her, sooner than not talk at all. I shall never believe you, but I shall hear her name, and name her myself. That will be enough for me." So Th.o.r.e grumbled away about his troubles, and Thorstan listened to him.

He himself saw Gudrid seldom, because he believed that it made her uneasy to have him there. Nevertheless he prevailed upon Th.o.r.e to bring her to Brattalithe very often; and when she was there he would take himself off cheerfully to work about the estate. Eric Red always made much of her, and even Freydis liked her well enough. She was the only woman for whom Freydis had a civil word. Freydis used to frown upon her, with her arms folded under her bosom. "You have soft ways,"

she said, "and can make men do as you want; but all that is nothing to me. I see that you are made of steel underneath, for all that. I see that you are no fool, and no doll. One of these days you will fall in with a man worthy of you, and then I should like to see the pair of you at work."

Another time she said, "Good for you, Gudrid, that you have no child."

Gudrid said, "That is not my opinion. I wish with all my heart I had."

"Wait," said Freydis, "until you have a man for a mate." But that made Gudrid's eyes bright.

"You must not scorn my husband to my face," she said.

"Pooh!" said Freydis; "he's not here for long." Then Gudrid turned pale, and grew very grave.

"You know that, then?"

"Why," said Freydis, "it is common knowledge. We have all had to do with Thorberg. She has the second sight."

"That is dreadful to me," Gudrid said, but Freydis took it easily.

"You are woman enough to bear what you must bear," she said. "One of you must die before the other. I hope you don't want to share graves with such an old man as Th.o.r.e? Well, then, suppose it had been you that were to die first--do you suppose that Th.o.r.e would have left you for some other girl? What do you take him for? Not he. He's man enough to have his pleasure. Trust him for that."

Such was Freydis, who treated her own husband with a high hand, and sent for him when she wanted him.

Freydis spoke of the marriage of Thorstan and Gudrid as of an appointed thing. "You will suit each other," she said. "There is good mettle in Thorstan."

Gudrid could say nothing to that. The fate hung heavy upon her. She felt that she was killing Th.o.r.e, and had the knife in readiness with which to kill--not Thorstan but herself. For she knew that she had given Thorstan her heart, and that his death would be more certainly her own.

Meantime, with a dreadful fascination, she watched the doom settling like a storm about her husband Th.o.r.e. She only saw it; he himself, now that he was better, was unconscious of anything impending. He talked hopefully of what he should do when Thorwald came home with news of Wineland, having forgotten his dark commerce with Thorstan. But Thorstan had not forgotten, and seemed to be waiting, like a raven on a rock, until he should be dead. Gudrid, who was fanciful, saw herself and him in that guise--silent and watchful, each on a rock, made patient by certainty. All this was terrible to her, and made her old before her time. She was not more than three-and-twenty even now.

Thorstan avoided her, which made matters no better, but worse, rather; for she knew why he did it, and felt spotted, and longed to see him, and felt that she was accursed.

So life drew along for that summer and autumn; and then the long Greenland winter began, with the dark and the clinging, frozen fog.

Th.o.r.e seemed to make no stand against it, but took to his bed, from which Gudrid knew he would never rise. She waited on him hand and foot; he lay there watching her with his aching eyes, and wounded her to the heart. He hardly ever spoke, and seldom asked for anything.

Thorstan used to come up most days to ask how he did. Gudrid knew quite well when he was on the road, and would tell Th.o.r.e. "Here is Thorstan Ericsson coming. Will you not see him?"

"Nay, nay, not yet," was Th.o.r.e's answer.

Then there came a day when, being very ill, and nearly blind with fever, Th.o.r.e asked to see Thorstan. So Gudrid opened the door to him, and her colour came back to her when she said, "Th.o.r.e has asked for you. Come in, then."

Thorstan, glowing in his health and strength, came into the hall.

Gudrid took his furs from him to dry them by the fire, for the fog was frozen thick upon them.

Thorstan sat on the edge of the bed, and asked Th.o.r.e how he did. "I do badly," said Th.o.r.e, "but before long it will be better with me."

Gudrid was turning away when he said to her, "Nay, do you stop here. I shall need you." So she stood where she was, a little way from the bed, half dreading and half glorying in what was to come.

Th.o.r.e shut his eyes and seemed to wander in sleep. They heard him talking very fast to himself--counting the same things over and over again, and always failing at a certain number. They thought he was counting sheep--but it was salmon in a net. Thorstan watched him attentively, while Gudrid stood in a spell; but presently Thorstan got up and fetched a stool for her to sit upon. She could not look at him to thank him. So the time pa.s.sed in silence, broken only by the feverish whispering of the sick man. The thoughts of the man were deeply upon the woman, and the joy of her nearness made his heart beat.

As for her thoughts, if there was no joy in them, there was great content, and a sense of peace which she had not known for a long while.

She thought that a word from him might have broken down her peace.

"What need of speech between us two?" she thought. "I would live with him and know all his thoughts, and tell him all mine without speech at all."

Presently Th.o.r.e woke up with a start and asked what time it was. "It is late," Gudrid said. "I will bring you your broth, and maybe you will sleep a little." She turned away to the fire, but Th.o.r.e said sharply, "Stay; there is no need for broth now." Then he said, "Are you there, Thorstan? I cannot see you." Thorstan said, "Here I am."

Th.o.r.e spoke again. "Take the hand of Gudrid, and tell me that you have it." He faltered for a moment, but then looked at Gudrid, and called her with that look. She went over and gave him her hand.

"Is it done?" said Th.o.r.e.

"Yes, it is done," he was told.

"Her father was too quick when he married her to me, and you, maybe, were over-slow," Th.o.r.e said. "She would have married you at first if you had asked her. Now you must make the most of your time, for it won't be long. And I knew what the matter was between you from the first, but in those days I loved her dearly and could not let her go.

Now do you two be married soon, and take it not amiss with me that I have outstayed my time."

"You do wrong to speak so," Thorstan said. "Gudrid has been faithful and loving to you; and it is no fault of hers that she knew how it would turn out."

"No, no," said Th.o.r.e. "She has been good to me."

"Now I will tell you," said Thorstan, "that I have the second sight myself, and know what my fate is, and that she must take a third husband. But if it were my fate to die the day after my wedding with Gudrid, I would wed her if she would take me. You, Th.o.r.e, are dying a Christian. See to it, then, that you do not die with hard judgments of Gudrid in your heart."

Th.o.r.e lay still, breathing very short. They believed he was struggling with his thoughts.

Presently he called her, and she went to him, and kneeled by the bedhead, and put her cheek against his. He lay very still, and she remained patiently waiting. So then he had a great convulsion, and struggled in it; and then turned violently in his bed and sat up. He saw Gudrid kneeling, and smiled at her. It was as if he had newly awoken out of sleep, and was himself again as she had first known him.

She, as if knowing his mind, leaned towards him. He kissed her forehead, and lay down again. In a few moments more he was dead.

When they had laid him out, and lighted tapers about him, Thorstan said: "Do you now go and sleep, and I will sit up with him." She asked with the eyes that she might stay, but he would not have it. So she went away and made a bed by the fire, and slept long. He did not touch her, would not look at her. They neither kissed when they parted, nor at all until Th.o.r.e was buried. But after that, when she was at Brattalithe, and he found her there, he took her in his arms.

XVIII

There were many things about her marriage with Thorstan which she did not understand at the time--Thorstan's urgency for it was one, a kind of feverish haste about getting through with preliminaries; and another was his opposition to living anywhere but at Brattalithe. He would not go to her father's house, nor to that which had been Th.o.r.e's, and which was now hers for life. He put a reeve in each of them and took her to Brattalithe. Afterwards she understood everything, and was confounded by her former blindness; but it is the truth that Thorstan's love for her was of a sort to forbid thinking. She was carried off her feet and out of her common sense by his pa.s.sion. He, so dumb and still a man, was by the touch of pa.s.sion set on fire. And fire caught fire. The pair of them lived in each other, and the world seemed empty of all other men and women.

As for Thorstan himself, knowing what he knew, it is not wonderful that his love burned at white heat. Pa.s.sion with him was in a trap and fighting for an hour of life. What is wonderful is, that he never betrayed in any other way that he had the end in sight from the beginning. It was "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" with him. But Gudrid did not see it. She was too happy to see it. Her doom was flooded out by sunlight, as it were.

He made songs for her from the time of Th.o.r.e's death onwards, and in these his secret might have been revealed if she had been able to read below the surface. He sang her one night as she lay in his arms the terrible Song of Helgi and Sigrun. Certainly Death and Love embrace in that.

Helgi was a Wolfing, the son of Sigmund and Borghild. He was forecast a hero by the Norns, and at fifteen slew Hunding, who had slain his father. The sons of Hunding gathered themselves--Alf and Eywolf, Hiorward and Haward--and the hosts met in the plain under Lowfell.

There was war in heaven while those armies made it on earth. Out of the lightning flare came the Valkyrs, daughters of Odin, choosers of the slain. They rode grey horses; they wore helms and coats of mail; their spear-heads gleamed like fire. Helgi sat by the Eagle Rock and cried out to them to stay. And one--it was Hogni's daughter, Sigrun--turned him her fire-hued face and answered: "Other business have we in hand than to pledge you in horns. My father has plight me to King Hodbrord, whom I hold no better than the son of a cat. Yet he will come for me soon unless you deliver me." Then love grew between them as they looked at each other; and Helgi said: "Fear not Hodbrord, for I will meet him unless I am dead."

King Hodbrord called up his levies and mustered a host. The ships flocked about Brandey, but still he waited, and warriors came to him, hundreds of them, from Hedinsey and other islands. Then said Helgi to Hiorleif, "Is the host called?" And Hiorleif nodded his head and pointed them out over sea, high-beaked ships, hemmed with shields, thick on the water like wild swans. They fought in a storm, and the waves played their part in the battle. The waters drank as much blood as the swords; from on high Sigrun the Valkyr guided the warriors of Helgi.

Now King Hodbrord stood in the gate of his house, hooded and helmed, his spear in his hands. He saw far off in the valley hors.e.m.e.n riding with speed, whose cloaks flew out in the wind they made. Who come here? Whose is the host? And G.o.dmund, his housewife, told him of the sea-fight, and that the Wolfings were coming against his house. Then looking, he saw the helm-bright Valkyrs coursing the air, keeping pace with the hors.e.m.e.n below. They met in a crash by the Wolf rock; the swords flamed, the spears were like flying stars. Over the dead Hodbrord Sigrun the Valkyr cried in triumph, "Never for your arms is Sigrun of Sevafell," and as she spoke the arm of Helgi the hero held her fast.

Their love was fierce, but it was short. Helgi is dead of countless wounds, and laid in his barrow with his weapons beside him. Sigrun of Sevafell keeps the house; she sits by the fire; her eyes are hard. She says to herself--

"Now had been here Had he been minded Sigmund's son, The hero Helgi, Out of the halls of Odin; But the eagles roost On the high ash-boughs, All the household Falleth to dreams-- Faint is my hope of him now."