PAGE 8
Elsket
by
“I have fought it ten long years,” he said, slowly.
Not willing to break the thread of his thought by speaking, I lit my pipe afresh and just looked at him. He received it as an answer.
“She is the last of them,” he said, accepting me as an auditor rather than addressing me. “We go back to Olaf Traetelje, the blood of Harold Haarfager (the Fairhaired) is in our veins, and here it ends. Dane and Swede have known our power, Saxon and Celt have bowed bare-headed to us, and with her it ends. In this stronghold many times her fathers have found refuge from their foes and gained breathing-time after battles by sea and land. From this nest, like eagles, they have swooped down, carrying all before them, and here, at last, when betrayed and hunted, they found refuge. Here no foreign king could rule over them; here they learnt the lesson that Christ is the only king, and that all men are his brothers. Here they lived and worshipped him. If their dominions were stolen from them they found here a truer wealth, content; if they had not power, they had what was better, independence. For centuries they held this last remnant of the dominion which Harold Haarfager had conquered by land, and Eric of the Bloody Axe had won by sea, sending out their sons and daughters to people the lands; but the race dwindled as their lands had done before, and now with her dies the last. How has it come? As ever, by betrayal!”
The old man turned fiercely, his breast heaving, his eyes burning.
“Was she who came of a race at whose feet jarls have crawled and kings have knelt not good enough?” I was hearing the story and did not interrupt him–“Not good enough for him!” he continued in his low, fierce monotone. “I did not want him. What if he was a Saxon? His fathers were our boatmen. Rather Cnut a thousand times. Then the race would not have died. Then she would not be–not be so.”
The reference to her recalled him to himself, and he suddenly relapsed into silence.
“At least, Cnut paid the score,” he began once more, in a low intense undertone. “In his arms he bore him down from the Devil’s Seat, a thousand feet sheer on the hard ice, where his cursed body lies crushed forever, a witness of his falsehood.”
I did not interrupt, and he rewarded my patience, giving a more connected account, for the first time addressing me directly.
“Her mother died when she was a child,” he said, softly. His gentle voice contrasted strangely with the fierce undertone in which he had been speaking. “I was mother as well as father to her. She was as good as she was beautiful, and each day she grew more and more so. She was a second Igenborg. Knowing that she needed other companionship than an old man, I sought and brought her Cnut (he spoke of him as if I must know all about him). Cnut was the son of my only kinsman, the last of his line as well, and he was tall and straight and strong. I loved him and he was my son, and as he grew I saw that he loved her, and I was not sorry, for he was goodly to look on, straight and tall as one of old, and he was good also. And she was satisfied with him, and from a child ordered him to do her girlish bidding, and he obeyed and laughed, well content to have her smile. And he would carry her on his shoulder, and take her on the mountain to slide, and would gather her flowers. And I thought it was well. And I thought that in time they would marry and have the farm, and that there would be children about the house, and the valley might be filled with their voices as in the old time. And I was content. And one day he came! (the reference cost him an effort). Cnut found him fainting on the mountain and brought him here in his arms. He had come to the village alone, and the idle fools there had told him of me, and he had asked to meet me, and they told him of the mountain, and that none could pass the Devil’s Ledge but those who had the old blood, and that I loved not strangers; and he said he would pass it, and he had come and passed safely the narrow ledge, and reached the Devil’s Seat, when a stone had fallen upon him, and Cnut had found him there fainting, and had lifted him and brought him here, risking his own life to save him on the ledge. And he was near to death for days, and she nursed him and brought him from the grave.