THE ISLAND SPELL.
The Holy Isle was bathed in morning sunshine, shadows of light
clouds chased each other over the hills across the sound, and out
beyond the headlands the blue sea glimmered restfully.
On a bank of turf sloping to the rocks Estein sat with Osla,
drinking in the freshness of the air. She had milked their
solitary cow, baked cakes enough for the day's fare, and now, her
simple housekeeping over, she was free to entertain her guest.
"My father, I fear, is in a black mood," she said. "His moods come
and go, I know not why or when. To-day and perhaps to-morrow, and
it may be for four days or more, he will sit in his cell or on the
grass before the door, speaking never a word, and hardly answering
when I talk to him. Pay no heed to him; he means no
inhospitality."
"I fear he likes me not," said Estein. "He came here to escape
men, you say, and now he has to entertain a stranger and a
Viking."
"It is not that," she said. "The black moods come when we are
alone; they come sometimes with the rising storm, sometimes when
the sun shines brightest. I cannot tell when the gloom will fall,
nor when he will be himself again. When his mind is well, he will
talk to me for hours, and instruct me in many things."
"Has he instructed you in this religion he professes? Know you
what gods he worships?"
Osla opened her eyes in perplexed surprise; she hardly felt
herself equal to the task of converting this pagan, and yet it
were a pity not to try. So she told him, with a woman's
enthusiastic inaccuracy, of this new creed of love, then being so
strikingly illustrated in troubled, warlike Christian Europe.
"And what of the gods I and my ancestors have worshipped for so
long? What place have they in the Valhalla of the white Christ?"
"There are no other gods."
"No Odin, no Thor, no Freya of the fair seasons, no Valhalla for
the souls of the brave? Nay, Osla, leave me my gods, and I will
leave you yours. Mine is the religion of my kinsmen, of my father,
of my ancestors. And," he continued, "would you say that Christian
men are better than worshippers of Odin? Are they braver, are
their swords keener, are they more faithful to their friends?"
"We want not keen swords. Warfare is your only thought. You live
but to pillage and to fight. Have you known what it is to lose
home and brothers all in one battle? Have you fled from a smoking
roof-tree? Have you had mercy refused you? Have you had wife or
child borne away to slavery? That is your creed--tell me, is it
not?"
"I have thought of these things, Osla," said Estein gravely. "I
have thought of them at night when the stars shone and the wind
sighed in the trees. When I look upon my home and see the reapers
in the fields, and hear the maidens singing at their work, I would
sometimes be willing to turn hermit like your father, and sit in
the sun for ever.
"But," he went on, and his voice rose to a clear, stirring note,
"I could not rest long so. The sea calls us Northmen, and we
cannot bide at home. Unrest seizes us like a giant and hurls us
forth. We must be men; we must seek adventure on sea or on shore;
there are foemen to be met, and we long to meet them; and if we
bear us bravely, never striking sail though the wind blow high,
and never flinching from the greatest odds, we know that the gods
will smile, and, if they will, we die happy. We are not all
bairn-slayers. I have been taught to spare where there was nothing
worthy of my steel, and no maid or mother has yet suffered wrong
at my hands. Yet must I sail the seas, Osla, and fight where I
find a foe; for I feel that the gods bid me, and a man cannot
struggle with his fate."
While he spoke Osla's gaze was fixed on the turning tide, but her
eyes, had he seen them, were lit by the fire of his words. She
sprang to her feet as he finished, and said,--
"I, too, have the Norse blood in me; the sea calls me as it calls
you; and if I were a man, I fear I should make a bad hermit.
Yet"--and she held up a warning finger to stay the impetuous words on
Estein's tongue--"yet I know I should be wrong. What is this
feeling but the hunger of wolves, and what are your gods but names
for it? Wolves, too, go out to slay; and if they had speech,
doubtless they would say that Thor called them."
"Is a Viking not different from a wolf, then, in your eyes?"
"By too little," she answered, "if they hold the same creed."
"A wolf, then, I am," he replied; "and I can but try to keep my
lips drawn over my fangs and bit on my hind legs, and practise
manliness as best I may."
"A very hungry manliness," she retorted. But despite herself she
smiled, and then lightly turned the talk to other things.
From day to day the quiet island life went on with few incidents
and pleasant monotony. With only one family was there any
intercourse, and that almost entirely on Osla's part. On the shore
of the great island to the west, which men called Hrossey, dwelt a
large farmer, named Margad, and from his household such supplies
as they needed were obtained. He was an honest, peaceable man, as
the times went, with a kindly wife, Gudrun by name, and they both
took a friendly interest in the hermit's daughter. Estein would
fain have lived in her society all day, listening to her talk and
watching the wind play with her hair, and every day he noticed,
with a sense of growing disappointment, that he saw her more
seldom. Sometimes they would have long talks, and then, abruptly
as it seemed to him, she would have to leave him, and he would
spend his time in fishing from a boat, or would cross with her to
Hrossey, and while she went to see Dame Gudrun he pursued the
roe-deer and moor-fowl.
With bow and arrow, and by dint of long and arduous stalks, he
brought home scanty but well-earned spoil, and then, either by
himself, or more often with Osla in the stern, he would cross the
sound as the day faded, to a welcome supper and an evening spent
in the firelit cell, or to a peaceful night beside the swirl of
the tideway under a sky so pale and clear that only the brightest
stars were ever seen.
He knew that he was in love, hopelessly in love. Why else should
he stay in the Holy Isle after his wounds were healed, and when
nothing bade him remain? Far away and faint sounded the echoes of
war and the shouts of revelry. Like memories of another life,
thoughts of his father, of Helgi, of friends and kinsmen, came to
him, pricked him for a moment, and faded into a pair of dark-blue
eyes and a tall and slender figure. He still talked to Osla of
voyages and battles, and caught her sometimes taking more interest
than she would own in some old tale of derring-do, or a story of
his own adventures. Yet the actual memories of these things grew
fainter, and he talked like an old man telling of his youth.
"I am under a spell," he would say to himself, and stride more
quickly over the heather, and then catch himself smiling at the
thought of some word or look of Osla's.
The hermit's black mood passed away, and was followed by an
attitude of grave distance towards his guest. He spoke little, but
always courteously, and seemed to treat him at first merely as an
addition to the live stock of the island.
One night Estein, after the manner of the skalds, sang a poem of
his own as they sat round the fire. He called it the "King's War
Song."
"On high the raven banner
Invites the hungry kites,
Red glares the sun at noon-tide,
Wild gleam the Northern lights;
The war-horn brays its summons,
And from each rock-bound fiord
Come the sea-kings of Norway,
To follow Norway's lord.
"The cloven arrow speeding,
Fraught with war's alarms,
Calls the ravens to their feast,
The Udallers to arms.
See that your helms be burnished,
See that your blades be ground,
When he of Yngve's kindred
Sends the war token round!"
"Skoal, [Footnote: The Norse drinking salutation.] Vandrad!
skoal!" cried the hermit.
His hearers looked at him in amazement. His eyes flashed, his lips
twitched, the whole man was transformed for the moment into the
Viking of the western seas.
"Once I was a skald myself," he said. "You have quickened what I
thought was dead." And he rose and walked out into the night.
For a minute they were too surprised to speak. Then Osla said
softly,--
"Your magic is too strong, Vandrad." She threw him one glance that
lived long in his memory, and quickly followed her father.
For more than an hour afterwards he could dimly see them pacing
the shore in silence, her arm within the hermit's.
Next day the old man was more silent and reserved than before, but
every now and then Estein saw that his eyes followed him, and the
few words he spoke were couched in a kindlier manner.
"Sing to him again," whispered Osla in the evening, and night
after night the young skald sang and the hermit and his daughter
listened. Sometimes when he was finished the old Viking would talk
on various themes. Brief glimpses of his earlier days, snatches of
religious converse, his travels, and the strange peoples he had
seen, he would touch upon before the evening prayer.
And so the time passed away, till Estein had spent six weeks in
the Holy Isle. All the while he had made no open love to Osla. She
seemed merely friendly, and he was distracted between a wild
desire to break down the barriers between them and a strange and
numbing feeling of warning that held him back, he knew not why. So
strong was it at times that he fancied two spells cast upon him,
one by the island maiden, the other by some unknown spirit.
One morning he found her wandering by the cliffs that formed the
seaward barrier of the isle.
"Let us sit here, Osla," he said. "I have a new song to sing you."
"I must bake my cakes," she answered. "Can you not sing it to us
to-night?"
"It concerns only you. Sit here but for a moment; it is not long,
and you can escape from me when I have done."
"Very well," she said, with a smile and an air of resignation. "I
will listen, but do not keep me long."
"If it will tire you, I can wait."
"You can try me."
"I must leave the Holy Isle soon, Osla; I have been too long away
from my kinsfolk and my country. It is hard to part, but it must
come some day, and these verses are my parting song."
She was silent, and seemed intently plucking sea pinks.
"I cannot tell you why," he went on, "but to-day I feel that my
hour has come to rove again. I would that I might live here for
ever, but I know it is not fated so."
Then he sang his farewell song:--
"Canst thou spare a sigh, fair Osla? It is fated I must go. Wilt
thou think of Vandrad ever When the sea winds hoarsely blow, Or
will the memory of my love With absence fainter grow?
"Canst thou spare a tear, sweet Osla, When I sail from this fair
land? Wilt thou dream of Vandrad sometimes When the waves boom on
the strand? Can visions of a pleasant hour The march of time
withstand?
"Osla, when I bear me bravely, 'Midst the lightning of the sword,
And the armies meet like torrents When the mountain snows have
thawed The thought of thine approving smile Shall be my sole
reward.
"Fare thee well, sweet blue-eyed Osla! The sea-king must not stay,
E'en for tresses rich as summer And for smile as bright as May;
But one hope I cannot part from--We may meet again some day!"
"Then are you going?" she said, more softly than he had ever heard
her speak before.
"Do you wish me to stay?"
"Not if you wish to rove the seas again, and fight and plunder, as
a brave man should," she cried with a flash of raillery. "If it is
your fate to go, why should I stand in the way? Am I anything to
you?"
She gave him no time to answer, but rose and ran lightly away.