CORMAC COMES BACK
She hadn’t seen him since the day of her first bridal, the day when
Berse brought her home into Sowerby. They had parted in unkindness,
and it seems that they were to meet so; for her first feeling in her
discontent was of hot rage against him as the maker of it. Her eyes
were angry, and her cheek-bones were angry; she sat where she was by
the fire with her needlework still in her lap, and watched him, waiting
for him to speak.
Cormac, also, at first said nothing to her. He stood framed in the
doorway, wryly smiling, frowning with one eyebrow. He considered her
as a painter considers his unfinished work, whistling in his teeth as
he wonders where he shall begin. Words and phrases sang and danced in
his head, as he absorbed her again. Then he said, “Stangerd, you are
like a morning in April, when the sun is breaking through the rain, and
thinning it into mist. If I could stand always at this distance from
you, Stangerd, and look at you like this, I should make songs which
would be the music of all Iceland. But I can’t, and you know that I
can’t, keep so far from you now, after what has been between you and
me; and so I am going away from you, my golden wonder, and will put the
blue water between us. What do you say to that?”
He spoke lightly and mockingly, or so she felt it. She governed herself
therefore, so that he should never guess that she was unhappy. She
picked up her needlework and took a stitch or two, as she said, “You
will do as you please, I suppose. It is what you have always done.
When will you sail?”
“Not yet, not yet,” he said. Then he came into the hall and stood near
her, right over her. “So you tired of Berse, and have taken another
husband?”
She said nothing to that. “By and by,” he went on, “you may be willing
to have me.”
That time she could not answer him. He was hurting her.
He sat down beside her, and picked up an edge of the shift she was
hemming. “I remember very well, when you and I were plighted, that I
used to say you should be much married. You didn’t like it. It made you
angry. But you have done it. You are much married; and now it is I who
don’t like it. Do you remember that, Stangerd?”
She nodded, but could not look at him.
“I don’t like it at all,” he went on; “but I will tell you
this--believe it or not as you will. When I wished to see you with many
lovers, many husbands, Stangerd, I loved you much better than I do
now.”
A large tear rolled down her cheek, and hung there, until it fell into
her needlework. Cormac saw it gather and drop, but he did not alter his
manner.
“I am going with my brother Thorgils to Norway,” he told her; “but I
thought that I would come to see you again before I went. What are you
making there?”
She told him--a shift.
“It is for yourself? You will wear it?”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Why do you ask me?”
He said, “It would be strange if I was not interested in anything which
will be as near to you as this linen. It would be strange if I felt
very friendly-disposed towards it.”
“You need not tumble it in your hands, at least,” she said.
“I feel as if I were feeling about for a grip at its windpipe,” he
said, then stopped himself with a short laugh, and let go of it.
“Will you do me a service?” he asked her.
“What do you want me to do?”
“That linen you are stitching would make me a shirt to wear over my
mail. Will you make it for me instead of yourself?”
She looked at him quickly. “Are you going to wear mail? Are you going
Viking?”
His eyes laughed. “I think so,” he said; “like my father before me--but
not by any means for so good a reason.”
“What was your father’s reason?” she asked him; and he told her.
“He was a man of large mind and great passions. He felt that the world
lay to the hand of the man who could handle it. He said that the might
followed the mind. He was restless, and cramped in this country of
stony hills and narrow dales and strait seas. The fire burned in him
and he gave it vent. He went far and did greatly; he went often, and
at last he never came back. But he died as he had lived, greatly.”
She thought that very fine, and expected much the same answer to her
next question; but she did not get it.
“And what is your reason?”
“My reason is that I may forget that you ever lived and made me
suffer,” he said plainly.
She bit her lips, and her eyes filled with smarting tears.
“You are ungenerous. You are a coward to say so. And it is not at all
true. I was living at Nupsdale when you came there. I could not know
that you were coming, or who you were that came. You saw me, and after
that never left me alone. You taught me to love you--and then you left
me, when you had made your songs about me. That was all you wanted out
of me, I see very well. Well, go now, and make your songs of whom you
will.”
He stood over her now, dark with rage. “Song! Song! What song is left
in me? What have I left to sing of? The glory of song is departed from
me. Once I had it like a running water in me, a well-spring that never
ran dry. Then you came and dipped your hands in it, and it flowed all
about you as if it would carry you away to the sea. And then it slept.
It went when you were false to me.”
And now she jumped up, flaming. “I was never false to you. I was never
false. You are lying. It was you who tired of me, and left me in the
lurch on my wedding-day. I sat alone here in my crown, with my maids,
waiting for you--and you did not come. Now go to sea or where you
will--but leave me. I will never make a shirt for you, so long as I
live.”
There where she stood, all flushed and splendid in her fury, he came to
her and took her in his arms. Before she could stop him he had kissed
her twice, roughly and fiercely. Then she broke away, and left him
without another word.
But when she came back more than an hour later, he was still there in
the same place. She stiffened her neck and squared her shoulders.
“I required you to go,” she said, “but you are still here. What sort of
conduct is this, do you think? My father and my husband will be here
soon, and there will be more trouble on your account. Has there not
been enough?”
Cormac said, “Stangerd, I can’t go until you forgive me. I acted badly,
I am very sorry.”
“You forgot yourself,” she said; “but I shan’t bear a grudge. Go in
peace.”
“Yes,” he said, “I will go. But I shall see you again.”
“You cannot,” she told him. “Thorwald will be angry.”
“That makes no matter,” he said, “so long as you are not angry.”
She said, “Ah, but I shall be very angry if you use me so.” She spoke
more kindly.
“I will not,” he said. “I will not touch you again, unless I go mad
again.”
“That’s no promise at all,” she said.
“When you are angry,” he said, “I want you more than ever I did in my
life. And you call up something in me which must subdue you at all
costs. That’s the way of it. Fire calls to fire, and the two burn and
leap together.”
She was grave now, and shook her head. “This must not be,” she said. “I
shall go away from here as soon as I can.”
“You will do no good by that. I shall find you.”
“I hope you will not try.”
“I also hope so. I could not be happy with you if I had you--nor you
with me.”
“Cormac,” she said, and touched his arm, “you must learn to do without
me. It is not to be. Now I see very well that it was true what your
brother Thorgils said when he was here that day--when you were not. He
said that the spae-wife had put a spell upon our plighting, that you
and I could never come together. And it is true; we have not, and we
shall not.”
He seized both her hands. “Stangerd, come now--come with me! I am
parcht with thirst.”
She tried to get away. “No, no, no! You can never drink of me.”
He implored her, he raved; but she was ready for him now. She was kind,
but she would do nothing. Then she heard her people coming in, and told
him to go. He said he would not unless she kissed him. She did it, but
not as he wished.
He went out, brushing by Thorkel and Thorwald, who were coming in to
dinner. He took no notice whatever of them; but Thorwald asked who he
was.
Thorkel said shortly, “That’s a man whom I don’t want to see any more.
That is Black Cormac of Melstead, a dangerous man. He has been after
Stangerd, you may be sure. Now you must deal quietly with that man, or
you will be sorry for it. He has brought more troubles to this house
than enough.”
Thorwald brushed his nose with the golden end of his beard and was
silent through dinner. Afterwards he asked Stangerd about Cormac. She
told him that he was going abroad and had come to say good-bye.
Thorwald said he was glad to know that. “He was not very civil to
Thorkel or to me.”
“He had no reason to be,” Stangerd said rather shortly.
Thorwald said, “You surprise me. What, is he to treat your husband like
so much brushwood?”
“He is a man,” Stangerd replied, “who treats other men as he finds
them. If they are friendly, so is he; if unfriendly, he is more so. If
they are indifferent, so is he.”
“But,” said Thorwald, “I was not indifferent--though he was. How could
I be indifferent to the men who come to visit you?”
“You had better learn to be indifferent when Cormac comes,” she said.
Thorwald was very surprised, and brushed his nose a long time, until
she asked him to cease.
“And why, pray, am I to cease?” he asked.
She said, “Because I ask it.”
He found the reason bad. “Nobody has ever asked me that before.”
She said, “I hope that I shan’t have to ask it again.”
He considered this answer. “It’s a little trick I have,” he said.
She replied, “It’s a little trick I don’t like. It makes you look very
foolish.”
“Nobody,” he said, “has ever told me so before.”
“I wish that somebody had,” said she, “for then it would not have been
for me to tell you.”
He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Do you think it seemly
to tell your husband that he looks foolish?”
She returned to her seat by the fire and her sewing. “I think it more
seemly,” she said, “than that he should continue to look so.”