“_The mind rules one-half of the victory_”
—Northern saying.
“Jarl, it is not fitting that you should even seem to attend on me! Let
me accompany you to your hall as becomes me, and afterwards go my way
alone—”
“And rob me of a chance to see the horses come up to the post in a race
I have wagered on?” the Jarl interrupted. “Out upon your idea of
fitness! I am not sure that I shall not even go upon that slope behind
the women’s house and watch you through a broken window I know of. Would
it not give you a sense of being supported to feel my eyes upon you?” He
walked on as one serenely unaware that his companion had stopped short
in dismay.
He did not go so far as to carry out his threat, however. When—by
snow-banked roads and snow-buried lanes, dim in the early gloaming—they
had come to the court-yard and the looming pile of the women’s house,
Helvin halted in the shadow of a tree.
“I think I will go no farther,” he said. “If it happen as I expect, they
will not close the doors after you immediately, as after one whose
welcome is certain. I shall be able to see some of the sport from here,
before the banging of them in my face tells me that my foretelling has
come true.”
“It is for you to decide,” Randvar made use of the proper phrase. And he
had made a stride forward when—like the jerk of a cord suddenly
stretched—an impulse turned him back.
“Lord,” he said, almost with fierceness, “tell me that you were jesting
when you accused me of forsaking my allegiance to you. Say that you do
not hold me for a deserter, or my foot shall wither before ever it makes
a move to leave you!”
Out of the shadow in which he stood, Helvin’s voice sounded presently
like a harp strain with one minor chord.
“We must take this, comrade, as it is. It was a jest,—and it was the
truth. You could no more hold back than I could stay you, and I would
not keep you if I could. All that man can give to man, you have given
me,—I ask not woman’s share besides. Go, and good go with you for your
love!”
Down in the shadow, their hands met and clasped; then the song-maker
turned and once more went forward towards the dark mass. After some
delay the broad doors opened before him, and—as had been foretold—did
not close after him.
Through the ruddy gap, the Jarl’s gaze followed his song-maker into a
fire-bright hall whose wall-benches were aflower with women in kirtles
of deep red and dull yellow and corn-flower blue. Like green beads from
a broken necklace, pages were scattered over the floor playing a game of
ball; and dodging between them and stumbling over them, swarthy
thrall-men were bringing in tables for the evening meal. A fancy came to
amuse the Jarl that it was like the arrival of a war-arrow in a
peace-camp when his messenger stepped into the ring of the firelight.
From chess-board and bead-stringing and gossip, the women turned with
smothered exclamations; while the purple-robed girl in the high-seat sat
like one stricken motionless, her hand still holding out the silk ball
she was winding from the skein which a page held apart before her.
Splendid in raiment now was the son of Freya, the king-born. As
sun-burnished waves shone his newly trimmed hair, and his garments were
all of velvet banded with fine sable, and sable lined the cloak that
fell from his mighty shoulders. Regarding him, another fancy brought a
smile to the Jarl.
“He put on fine clothes as a man puts on armor, and like a flight of
arrows are the glances shot against him. I would lay down my life on it
that he would sooner go against arrows.”
If that were so, still no one could tell from the song-maker’s bearing
whether desperation or confidence ruled in his mind. Passing between the
fires, he came before the footstool of Brynhild the Proud. When he had
made salute, he stood waiting in the attitude of courtly submission, one
hand on his hilt and one on his breast, an attitude that took on new
meaning because proud strength spoke from every line of his virile face
and his sinewy body.
Motionless, she sat gazing at him, whether in speechless displeasure or
speechless amazement, no one could tell from her expression. Signing the
petrified page to withdraw out of ear-shot, she said at last:
“This behavior seems to me so bold that I have never seen any act so
bold as this. What is your errand with me?”
“I will speak it aloud and not mutter about it,” he answered. “I have
two. The first, which I care the most about, is to reconcile myself to
you. The other is a message from the Jarl, which I hold as a shield
against an unfavorable reception.”
She drew back to the extreme limit of her high-seat, her face set like a
cameo against the dark wood. The best she could do was to observe
presently, with haughtiness:
“To me it would seem more becoming to carry out your lord’s business
first.”
“Becoming it might be, but more imprudent than to lay aside a shield in
unequal combat.”
“Unequal?” She managed to curl her flowerlike lips. “Hear a wonder! On
Treaty Day, you claimed the victory over me.”
“Said I that I got the victory over you? Here now I do confess that you
have me at your pleasure. If you bid me leave you, I can do nothing
against it. If you refuse me your friendship, no power is strong enough
to get it for me; though no man on earth will lack joy more than I, if
that must be.”
One swift look she sent round to make sure that no one else could hear
the low-voiced words, then sat tapping the chair arm with her jewelled
fingers, her bosom rising and falling like a white billow under the lace
of her kerchief. Out of the stormy deeps, passionate words rose at last.
“I do not wish that you should value me like that, any more than I want
to feel the way you make me feel. Do you not know that your offence
against me was heavier even than Olaf’s? He pushed my hands away, and
recked little what I said; but you—though you stood with bound hands—you
laid hold of my mind and moulded it to your will! You made of me—of
_me_—a screaming shield-maiden, ready to slay my childhood’s friend! And
then you stood there and laughed in your triumph!”
He said slowly: “True enough I laughed—for one breath’s space—and that
passed for an offence; but for three months you have made me the
soberest man in the New Lands. Is not that atonement?”
A glance she flashed to challenge his sincerity, but her eyes could not
withstand his eyes’ steady wooing. She spoke without looking at him:
“If that were all! But you have done more. There is that which survives
even that madness. Some door you have opened in my mind through which
all my peace and pride have gone. Things I have never wanted before, now
look good to me; and all I have seems as nothing, and the heavens reel
around me, and I do not know one day what I am going to want the next.
You have made me a thrall-woman in my own eyes, in proving to me that
the passions that shake such base creatures can also shake me—that I can
fear like them—hate like them—sin like them—love like them! Only if this
be love, I tell you this,—that I will never yield to it! _I will not
love you!_”
Her gaze was meeting his now with all a Valkyria’s weapon-play. It was
he who lowered his eyes, lest their fire offend her.
“Why you should love me, I know no reason at all,” he said. “I hope for
it only as a priest hopes for a miracle. This alone I know,—that I love
you, so that to waken in the morning and look forward to the hope of
speaking with you is to sit in a Greenland winter and look forward to
the summer. Will you not grant me the boon I beg because to you it means
so little, and to me it means so much?”
“I will not say that it meant little to hear your songs and your
adventures,” she answered presently, with courtesy. Soon after that, in
the gloaming of her eyes a light flickered starlike. “Any more than I
can deny that Freya’s son can be a courtman when he chooses,” she added.
Then her mouth became as grave as it was gracious. “It may be that if
you will give me your promise never to talk to me about—miracles—”
“So shall it be that I will take banishment from you as from a lawman,
if once I break the agreement!”
After a moment she rose with queenful composure, stretching out her hand
to the group around the entrance.
“Why do you allow the doors to remain open?” she called. “Our guest will
not leave until he has partaken of our hospitality.”
With a crash, the great doors swung to, startling the Jarl where he
stood in the darkness of the court-yard. At first he smiled whimsically,
and made a gesture of drinking to his companion within. Then, as he
turned to go back alone, the smile faded. The face he lifted to the
stars seemed to be asking a bitter question of the planet that had stood
over his birth.