IN THE CELL BY THE ROOST.
On the rocky shore of the Holy Isle, Osla sat alone. The spell of
summer weather had passed from the islands, and in its wake the
wind blew keenly from the north, and the grey cloud-drift hurried
low overhead. All colour had died out of land and sea; the hills
looked naked and the waters cold.
And Vandrad, the sea-rover, had gone with the sunshine--had gone,
never so Osla said to herself, to return again.
She rose and tried to give her thoughts a lighter turn, but the
note of the north wind smote drearily upon her ears, and she left
the sea-shore with a sigh. For seven uneventful years she had
found in the sea a friend of whom she never tired, and on the
little island duties enough to make the days pass swiftly by. Why
should the time now hang heavy on her hands?
She walked slowly to the wind-swept cells. Her father sat within,
the blackness of night upon his soul, the Viking fire now burned
completely out.
She tried to rouse him, but he answered only in absent
monosyllables. Again she sought the solace of the sea, but never,
it seemed to her, had it looked so cold and so unfriendly.
"Why did he ever come at all?" she said.
And so the days went by; summer changed to autumn, and autumn gave
place to winter. For week after week one gale followed another.
For days on end the spin-drift flew in clouds across the island,
salt and unceasing.
The sea was never silent, the gulls flew inland and the cormorants
sat storm-bound in their caves; brief glimpses of cold and sunny
weather passed as abruptly as they came, and in the smoke of a
driftwood fire Osla plied her needle and followed the wanderings
of her thoughts.
During all these months the hermit spoke little. So engrossed was
Osla in herself that she hardly noticed how seldom the cloud
seemed to lift from his mind. Never as before did he talk with her
at length, or instruct her from the curious scraps of knowledge
his once acute mind had picked up from sources Christian and
pagan, from the wise men of the North and the monasteries of
southern lands. He never once alluded to their guest, never even
apparently observed his departure, and in her heart his daughter
thanked him for his silence.
The lingering winter passed at length, and one morning, in the
first freshness of spring, Osla stood without the cell. Presently
her father joined her, and she noticed, though her thoughts were
busy elsewhere, that he wore a strange expression. He looked at
her doubtfully, and then said,--
"Where is Vandrad? I would hear him sing."
Then Osla started, and her heart smote her.
"Vandrad, father?" she said gently. "He has been gone these eight
months. Did you not know?"
The hermit seemed hardly to comprehend her words.
"Gone!" he repeated. "Why did you not tell me?"
"Surely you knew," she said.
"Why went he away? I would hear him sing. He used to sing to me of
war. He sang last night. Last night," he repeated doubtfully;
"methinks it was last night. Bring him to me."
She turned his questions as best she could, and strove to make him
think of other things. With her arm through his they paced the
turf along the shore, and all the while her heart sank lower and
lower. She was in the presence of something so mysterious that
even wise men in those days shrank from it in fear. It was the
finger of God alone, they said, that laid a blight on human minds,
and there before her was His handiwork.
Yet, had she but known it, this blight had been the slow work of
years. Her father's mind, always dark and superstitious, and
tinged with morbid melancholy, had gradually in these long
solitary years given way more and more before sombre underminings,
till now, with old age at the gates, it had at last succumbed.
Some few bright moments there were at rare intervals, but in all
the months that followed it was but the shattered hull of Thord
the Tall, once the terror of the western seas, that lingered on
the Holy Isle.
The care of him had at least the effect of turning Osla's thoughts
away from herself. Than sunshine and another's troubles there are
no better tonics.
Yet it was a dreary summer for the hermit's daughter, and it grew
all the drearier and more lonesome when the long, fresh days began
to shorten, and the sea was more seldom still and the wind more
often high. All the time, the old man grew slowly worse. He sat
continually in his cell; and though Osla would not acknowledge her
fears even to herself, she knew that death could not be far away.
Yet he lingered through the winter storms, and the end came upon a
February evening. All the afternoon the hermit had lain with shut
eyes, never speaking a word or giving a sign. It fell wet and
gusty at night, and Osla, bending over the couch, could hear
nothing but the wind and the roost she knew so well.
At length he raised his head and asked,--
"Are we alone, Osla?"
"There is no one here but me, father."
"Listen then," he said. "I have that on my mind that you must hear
before I die. My end is close at hand. I seem to have been long
asleep, and now I know that this wakefulness you see is but the
clearness of a man before he dies."
He took her hand as he spoke, and she tried to stifle a sob.
"Not so," she said, while the tears rose so fast that she could
only dimly see his face; "you are better, far better, to-night."
"I am death-doomed, Osla. Thord the Tall shall die in his bed
to-night, an old and worthless wreck. Once I had little thought of
such a death; and even now, though I die a Christian man, and my
hope is in Christ Jesus, and St. Andaman the holy, I would like
well to hear the clash of swords around me. But the doom of a man
is fated from his birth."
His daughter was silent, and the old Viking, seeming to gather
strength as he talked, went on in a strong, clear voice.
"I have heavy sins at my door. I have burned, I have slain in
battle, I have pillaged towns and devastated corn-lands. May the
Lord have mercy on my soul!
"He shall have mercy, Osla! I am saved, and the heathen I slew are
lost for ever. For the souls of the Christians who fell by this
hand I have done penance and given great gifts, and to-night these
things shall be remembered. To-night we part, Osla."
She held his great hand in both of hers, and pressed it against
her lips, and in a broken voice she said,--
"No, not to-night, not to-night."
"Ay, to-night," he said. "But before we part you must hear of one
deed that haunts me even now, though they were but heathens whom I
slew."
"The burning at Laxafiord?" she whispered.
"Who has not heard of that burning?" he cried. "The flames leapt
higher than the pine trees, the women shrieked--I hear them now!"
He paused, and she pressed his hand the tighter.
"Father!" she said softly, "father!" But he paid no heed to her,
for his mind had begun to wander, and he talked wildly to himself.
"Death-doomed I am. Have mercy upon my soul! ......Ay, the wind
blows, a stormy day for fishing, and the flames are leaping--I see
them leap! St. Ringan save me!......A Christian man, I tell
thee...... spare not, spare not! Smite them to the last man!"
Then he fell silent, and she laid her free hand upon his brow,
while outside the wind eddied and sang mournfully round the cell.
At last his mind cleared again, and he spoke coherently though
very feebly.
"I am dying, Osla; fare thee well! The box--you know the box?"
"The steel-bound box?" she answered.
"Ay, steel-bound, 'tis steel-bound indeed. I took it--"
He had begun to wander again, but with a last effort he collected
his thoughts and went on,--
"Open it. There is a writing. Read, it will tell--promise--I can
speak no more."
"I promise," she replied, hardly knowing what she said, her heart
was so full.
There was another brief silence, and then loudly and clearly he
cried,--
"Bring up my banner! Forward, Thord's men! Forward!......They
fly!......They fly!"
The voice died away, and Osla was left alone.