XIV
“More than all winter can one spring day yield”—Northern saying.
“More than all winter can one spring day yield”—Northern saying.
“More than all winter can one spring day yield”—Northern saying.
“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 whenit 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 thetrailing 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 meanclothes....” 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 monktoiled 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.