The next day, as Harold was entering the palace of Westminster, with
intent to seek the King's lady, his father met him in one of the
corridors, and, taking him gravely by the hand said:
"My son, I have much on my mind regarding thee and our House; come
with me."
"Nay," said the Earl, "by your leave let it be later. For I have it
on hand to see my sister, ere confessor, or monk, or schoolman, claim
her hours!"
"Not so, Harold," said the Earl, briefly. "My daughter is now in her
oratory, and we shall have time enow to treat of things mundane ere
she is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of things ghostly,
the last miracle at St. Alban's, or the last dream of the King, who
would be a great man and a stirring, if as restless when awake as he
is in his sleep. Come."
Harold, in that filial obedience which belonged, as of course, to his
antique cast of character, made no farther effort to escape, but with
a sigh followed Godwin into one of the contiguous chambers.
"Harold," then said Earl Godwin, after closing the door carefully,
"thou must not let the King keep thee longer in dalliance and
idleness: thine earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest that
these East Angles, as we Saxons still call them, are in truth mostly
Danes and Norsemen; people jealous and fierce, and free, and more akin
to the Normans than to the Saxons. My whole power in England hath
been founded, not less on my common birth with the freefolk of Wessex
--Saxons like myself, and therefore easy for me, a Saxon, to conciliate
and control--than on the hold I have ever sought to establish, whether
by arms or by arts, over the Danes in the realm. And I tell and I
warn thee, Harold, as the natural heir of my greatness, that he who
cannot command the stout hearts of the Anglo-Danes, will never
maintain the race of Godwin in the post they have won in the vanguard
of Saxon England."
"This I wot well, my father," answered Harold; "and I see with joy,
that while those descendants of heroes and freemen are blended
indissolubly with the meeker Saxon, their freer laws and hardier
manners are gradually supplanting, or rather regenerating, our own."
Godwin smiled approvingly on his son, and then his brow becoming
serious, and the dark pupil of his blue eye dilating, he resumed:
"This is well, my son; and hast thou thought also, that while thou art
loitering in these galleries, amidst the ghosts of men in monk cowls,
Siward is shadowing our House with his glory, and all north the Humber
rings with his name? Hast thou thought that all Mercia is in the
hands of Leofric our rival, and that Algar his son, who ruled Wessex
in my absence, left there a name so beloved, that had I stayed a year
longer, the cry had been 'Algar', not 'Godwin'?--for so is the
multitude ever! Now aid me, Harold, for my soul is troubled, and I
cannot work alone; and though I say naught to others, my heart
received a death-blow when tears fell from its blood-springs on the
brow of Sweyn, my first-born." The old man paused, and his lip
quivered.
"Thou, thou alone, Harold, noble boy, thou alone didst stand by his
side in the hall; alone, alone, and I blessed thee in that hour over
all the rest of my sons. Well, well! now to earth again. Aid me,
Harold. I open to thee my web: complete the woof when this hand is
cold. The new tree that stands alone in the plain is soon nipped by
the winter; fenced round with the forest, its youth takes shelter from
its fellows [111]. So is it with a house newly founded; it must win
strength from the allies that it sets round its slender stein. What
had been Godwin, son of Wolnoth, had he not married into the kingly
house of great Canute? It is this that gives my sons now the right to
the loyal love of the Danes. The throne passed from Canute and his
race, and the Saxons again had their hour; and I gave, as Jephtha gave
his daughter, my blooming Edith, to the cold bed of the Saxon King.
Had sons sprung from that union, the grandson of Godwin, royal alike
from Saxon and Dane, would reign on the throne of the isle. Fate
ordered otherwise, and the spider must weave web anew. Thy brother,
Tostig, has added more splendour than solid strength of our line, in
his marriage with the daughter of Baldwin the Count. The foreigner
helps us little in England. Thou, O Harold, must bring new props to
the House. I would rather see thee wed to the child of one of our
great rivals than to the daughter of kaisar, or outland king. Siward
hath no daughter undisposed of. Algar, son of Leofric, hath a
daughter fair as the fairest; make her thy bride that Algar may cease
to be a foe. This alliance will render Mercia, in truth, subject to
our principalities, since the stronger must quell the weaker. It doth
more. Algar himself has married into the royalty of Wales [112].
Thou wilt win all those fierce tribes to thy side. Their forces will
gain thee the marches, now held so feebly under Rolf the Norman, and
in case of brief reverse, or sharp danger, their mountains will give
refuge from all foes. This day, greeting Algar, he told me he
meditated bestowing his daughter on Gryffyth, the rebel under-King of
North Wales. Therefore," continued the old Earl, with a smile, "thou
must speak in time, and win and woo in the same breath. No hard task,
methinks, for Harold of the golden tongue."
"Sir, and father," replied the young Earl, whom the long speech
addressed to him had prepared for its close, and whose habitual self-
control saved him from disclosing his emotion, "I thank you duteously,
for your care for my future, and hope to profit by your wisdom. I
will ask the King's leave to go to my East Anglians, and hold there a
folkmuth, administer justice, redress grievances, and make thegn and
ceorl content with Harold, their Earl. But vain is peace in the
realm, if there is strife in the house. And Aldyth, the daughter of
Algar, cannot be house-wife to me."
"Why?" asked the old Earl, calmly, and surveying his son's face with
those eyes so clear yet so unfathomable.
"Because, though I grant her fair, she pleases not my fancy, nor would
give warmth to my hearth. Because, as thou knowest well, Algar and I
have ever been opposed, both in camp and in council; and I am not the
man who can sell my love, though I may stifle my anger. Earl Harold
needs no bride to bring spearmen to his back at his need; and his
lordships he will guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of a
woman."
"Said in spite and in error," replied the old Earl, coolly. "Small
pain had it given thee to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his
hand as a father-in-law--if thou hadst had for his daughter what the
great are forbidden to regard save as a folly."
"Is love a folly, my father?"
"Surely, yes," said the Earl, with some sadness--"surely, yes, for
those who know that life is made up of business and care, spun out in
long years, nor counted by the joys of an hour. Surely, yes; thinkest
thou that I loved my first wife, the proud sister of Canute, or that
Edith, thy sister, loved Edward, when he placed the crown on her
head?"
"My father, in Edith, my sister, our House has sacrificed enow to
selfish power."
"I grant it, to selfish power," answered the eloquent old man, "but
not enow for England's safety. Look to it, Harold; thy years, and thy
fame, and thy state, place thee free from my control as a father, but
not till thou sleepest in thy cerements art thou free from that
father--thy land! Ponder it in thine own wise mind--wiser already
than that which speaks to it under the hood of grey hairs. Ponder it,
and ask thyself if thy power, when I am dead, is not necessary to the
weal of England? and if aught that thy schemes can suggest would so
strengthen that power, as to find in the heart of the kingdom a host
of friends like the Mercians;--or if there could be a trouble and a
bar to thy greatness, a wall in thy path, or a thorn in thy side, like
the hate or the jealousy of Algar, the son of Leofric?"
Thus addressed, Harold's face, before serene and calm, grew overcast;
and he felt the force of his father's words when appealing to his
reason--not to his affections. The old man saw the advantage he had
gained, and prudently forbore to press it. Rising, he drew round him
his sweeping gonna lined with furs, and only when he reached the door,
he added:
"The old see afar; they stand on the height of experience, as a warder
on the crown of a tower; and I tell thee, Harold, that if thou let
slip this golden occasion, years hence--long and many--thou wilt rue
the loss of the hour. And that, unless Mercia, as the centre of the
kingdom, be reconciled to thy power, thou wilt stand high indeed--but
on the shelf of a precipice. And if, as I suspect, thou lovest some
other who now clouds thy perception, and will then check thy ambition,
thou wilt break her heart with thy desertion, or gnaw thine own with
regret. For love dies in possession--ambition has no fruition, and so
lives forever."
"That ambition is not mine, my father," exclaimed Harold, earnestly;
"I have not thy love of power, glorious in thee, even in its extremes.
I have not thy----"
"Seventy years!" interrupted the old man, concluding the sentence.
"At seventy all men who have been great will speak as I do; yet all
will have known love. Thou not ambitious, Harold? Thou knowest not
thyself, nor knowest thou yet what ambition is. That which I see far
before me as thy natural prize, I dare not, or I will not say. When
time sets that prize within reach of thy spear's point, say then, 'I
am not ambitious!' Ponder and decide."
And Harold pondered long, and decided not as Godwin could have wished.
For he had not the seventy years of his father, and the prize lay yet
in the womb of the mountains; though the dwarf and the gnome were
already fashioning the ore to the shape of a crown.