“_More than all winter can one spring day yield_”
—Northern saying.
The third month of spring was come upon the year when the Songsmith rode
back through the forest from his visit at Freya’s Tower; and the spirit
of spring was come upon him, so that his blood worked in his veins like
sap in a tree.
Sometimes the billowy clouds above him parted over tender blue, and let
through bursts of radiant sunshine that tiled his path with gold and
golden-lighted the dim aisle stretching out before him. Sometimes they
drew together in a lowering mass of gray, and let fall snow-flakes to
lie daisy-like upon the patches of springing green. Sometimes it was
bright streaks of rain that fell, meeting his cheek like so many soft
mouths, changing with the returning sun into laughing eyes winking from
every leaf. Whatever came, he took as joyously as the teeming earth.
The thrill that the earth must have known when it looked up at the first
rainbow, the Songsmith knew when he came at last to the cross-roads and,
through a bushy lattice, glimpsed bright-colored mantles and divined
that Brynhild had ridden out to meet him.
Feigning that she had checked her horse only to give her pages more time
to search the sodden thickets for flowers, she was lingering between the
budding walls of the lane, herself very like a spring flower in her
wrappings of leaf-green. When the horseman appeared at the head of the
lane, her first impulse was plainly to wheel and ride away from him; her
second, to draw her queenful self erect and flash such lightnings from
her eyes’ gray sky as should strike dead any presumptuous thought.
But he had no need to tame his joy for it had mounted to that height
where it was changed into a delicious terror. Almost was it beyond his
power to salute her, to answer becomingly the merry welcome of her
women. When at last he had reached her side and dismounted to receive
her greeting, the touch of her white hand lighting birdlike on his brown
one made his fingers tremble so that she could not fail to mark it.
A moment it seemed as though the blissful panic would even fall on her,
so speechless she sat before him, the wild-rose color blowing in her
cheeks. But even at the first hint of a surprised pause in the women’s
chatter, she recovered herself, and spoke with gracious composure.
“The weeks have seemed long without your songs, my friend. They say my
brother has begun to suffer in his temper through missing you and them.
Tell us if you gained enough pleasure by the visit to make up his loss;
and tell us about the bride, and how her mother likes her strapping new
son.”
She said “us,” but after a little space of polite pretence it became
doubtful how much interest her maidens had in the telling. As if
enamoured of the song-maker’s sleek black horse, they gathered around it
to caress its arching neck while they listened. From that, they drew off
to the side of the path to pluck up young grass spears for its
refreshment; then still farther off to the hedge of lilac bushes, gemmed
with long green buds. The time came at last when all who had not slipped
through the hedge had vanished around it, into the road, whence the
murmur of their voices came back sweetly, blending softly with the
tinkle of a brook flowing somewhere through the thicket.
It did not appear that their mistress knew whether they stayed or went,
save that she seemed to feel more freedom now in allowing her eyes to
follow their inclination to droop and rest on the trailing sprays of
fragrant buds with which the pages had filled her lap. Her lover neither
knew nor cared. He rambled on without even knowing what he was saying,
more than that it was something which held her listening while his eyes
drank their fill of her exquisite face. He would have stood there gazing
at her in silence, when he had finished telling of the feast, if she had
not roused herself hastily to end the pause.
“It has the sound of a song come true,” she said. “I wish I had better
tidings to give in return than this which you will think bad, that your
little foster-brother has deserted my service for Olaf’s, Thorgrim’s
son.”
“For Olaf’s!” he repeated in surprise. “What possessed the cub?”
“It surprised me also,” she assented, “for since he came to me, we have
never been apart either in word or deed. Yet Olaf looks grand in his
eyes, and lavishes on him a great store of gifts and privileges. I am
afraid he will get spoiled by it.”
His straight brows joining, the Songsmith gazed before him reflectively.
“I wonder if it would have been better had I taken him with me?” he
mused. “Yet would it have been to Erna a lasting sorrow to see the
change in him.... And it would have made him set greater store by
himself to see their mean clothes....” His musing branched
unconsciously. “It is a poor place, the Tower, yet I would not trade it
for the Jarl’s house to be born in.”
“Tell me how it appeared to you now?” she asked him, smiling. “The Tower
that let the wind blow in all the year around! Did it stir your wild
blood so that it became a hardship for you to come back to walls?”
It seemed that she saw the danger of such a question as soon as she had
given it voice, for she half put out her hand to snatch it back. But he
read the meaning of the gesture and obeyed it.
“It was no hardship to come back, Jarl’s sister.... Yet the place had
never seemed to me so fair. When I came home to it, that day after it
had happened to me to meet you in the forest, I saw only its bareness
and its poverty. Now it was as a song, every stone a word to tell of my
father’s love. I never knew a greater love among all men upon earth.
Night after night, while the others slept, I walked before the gray pile
and read its runes. Great bowlders are there that must have challenged
his strength to wrest from their beds in the earth, which yet he
wrestled with rejoicingly, since even so ingloriously he was conquering
something for his beloved one. The fragments over the archways—— Could
you but see, Jarl’s sister, the patient labor of their fitting! Never
monk toiled more devoutly with his brush! Night after night, it was as
though Rolf walked beside me pouring out his mind, so could I enter into
his joy that knew his love returned. Knowing that, what was it to fight
Hildebrand and twenty—forty—horsemen! Here I, his son, may not even end
where he began. I—”
He broke off because her hand had risen to forbid him, and stood awhile
with head bent and turned aside, his breath coming fast. But she did not
call her women as he had feared; he had time to master himself and begin
again.
“The stones Rolf placed were the words of the song; the memory of my
mother was the music. When I said the Tower was poverty stricken, I was
blind. More rich than an altar-shrine I think it, now that I know what a
woman’s love may mean. Jarl’s sister, you could not even dream such
visions as my memory gave me to see in the moonlight there!... Visions
of my king-born mother watering linen on the grass before the Tower ...
bringing drink to Rolf as he rested from his labor ... standing waiting
to bear back the cup when he should have finished, the leaf-shadows
playing on the soft masses of her hair.... Waiting before him, Freya,
the king-born! As I live, it looks to me now as if it must have been a
dream! Here, I cannot myself believe it.”
“I can,” the Jarl’s sister said dreamily, then started awake as she saw
passion flame up in his face past any checking. As a straw, it burned
away the barrier she sought to raise.
“Brynhild! If you had aught to give me, it cannot be that you would hold
it back! I will await your pleasure. I will wrestle with the roughness
in me even as Rolf wrestled with the bowlders, till I have made my mind
a place more worthy of your dwelling. But even as Freya cheered with her
love the man who loved her, give me some token that in time your pride
will yield! Some sign!”
“What would you?” she murmured. “My hands—”
He seized them both, crushed them against his lips. But he stayed not at
the arm’s-length she would have kept him. Holding her hands, he leaned
nearer; and the mystic might of spring throbbing in his veins purpled
his eyes and held her like a spell.
“Your mouth!” he prayed. “Olaf—Gunnar—fifty others—have had your hands.
Your mouth!”
He knew not that he drew her towards him; doubtless she knew not that
she yielded. Only, each knew that her lips were there before his, and he
had gathered their perfect flower.