CHAPTER IV.
THE ISLAND SPELL.
The Holy Isle was bathed in morning sunshine, shadows of light clouds chased each other over the hills across the sound, and out beyond the headlands the blue sea glimmered restfully.
On a bank of turf sloping to the rocks Estein sat with Osla, drinking in the freshness of the air. She had milked their solitary cow, baked cakes enough for the day's fare, and now, her simple housekeeping over, she was free to entertain her guest.
"My father, I fear, is in a black mood," she said. "His moods come and go, I know not why or when. To-day and perhaps to-morrow, and it may be for four days or more, he will sit in his cell or on the grass before the door, speaking never a word, and hardly answering when I talk to him. Pay no heed to him; he means no inhospitality."
"I fear he likes me not," said Estein. "He came here to escape men, you say, and now he has to entertain a stranger and a Viking."
"It is not that," she said. "The black moods come when we are alone; they come sometimes with the rising storm, sometimes when the sun shines brightest. I cannot tell when the gloom will fall, nor when he will be himself again. When his mind is well, he will talk to me for hours, and instruct me in many things."
"Has he instructed you in this religion he professes? Know you what gods he worships?"
Osla opened her eyes in perplexed surprise; she hardly felt herself equal to the task of converting this pagan, and yet it were a pity not to try. So she told him, with a woman's enthusiastic inaccuracy, of this new creed of love, then being so strikingly illustrated in troubled, warlike Christian Europe.
"And what of the gods I and my ancestors have worshipped for so long? What place have they in the Valhalla of the white Christ?"
"There are no other gods."
"No Odin, no Thor, no Freya of the fair seasons, no Valhalla for the souls of the brave? Nay, Osla, leave me my gods, and I will leave you yours. Mine is the religion of my kinsmen, of my father, of my ancestors. And," he continued, "would you say that Christian men are better than worshippers of Odin? Are they braver, are their swords keener, are they more faithful to their friends?"
"We want not keen swords. Warfare is your only thought. You live but to pillage and to fight. Have you known what it is to lose home and brothers all in one battle? Have you fled from a smoking roof-tree? Have you had mercy refused you? Have you had wife or child borne away to slavery? That is your creed—tell me, is it not?"
"I have thought of these things, Osla," said Estein gravely. "I have thought of them at night when the stars shone and the wind sighed in the trees. When I look upon my home and see the reapers in the fields, and hear the maidens singing at their work, I would sometimes be willing to turn hermit like your father, and sit in the sun for ever.
"But," he went on, and his voice rose to a clear, stirring note, "I could not rest long so. The sea calls us Northmen, and we cannot bide at home. Unrest seizes us like a giant and hurls us forth. We must be men; we must seek adventure on sea or on shore; there are foemen to be met, and we long to meet them; and if we bear us bravely, never striking sail though the wind blow high, and never flinching from the greatest odds, we know that the gods will smile, and, if they will, we die happy. We are not all bairn-slayers. I have been taught to spare where there was nothing worthy of my steel, and no maid or mother has yet suffered wrong at my hands. Yet must I sail the seas, Osla, and fight where I find a foe; for I feel that the gods bid me, and a man cannot struggle with his fate."
While he spoke Osla's gaze was fixed on the turning tide, but her eyes, had he seen them, were lit by the fire of his words. She sprang to her feet as he finished, and said,—
"I, too, have the Norse blood in me; the sea calls me as it calls you; and if I were a man, I fear I should make a bad hermit. Yet"—and she held up a warning finger to stay the impetuous words on Estein's tongue—"yet I know I should be wrong. What is this feeling but the hunger of wolves, and what are your gods but names for it? Wolves, too, go out to slay; and if they had speech, doubtless they would say that Thor called them."
"Is a Viking not different from a wolf, then, in your eyes?"
"By too little," she answered, "if they hold the same creed."
"A wolf, then, I am," he replied; "and I can but try to keep my lips drawn over my fangs and bit on my hind legs, and practise manliness as best I may."
"A very hungry manliness," she retorted. But despite herself she smiled, and then lightly turned the talk to other things.
From day to day the quiet island life went on with few incidents and pleasant monotony. With only one family was there any intercourse, and that almost entirely on Osla's part. On the shore of the great island to the west, which men called Hrossey, dwelt a large farmer, named Margad, and from his household such supplies as they needed were obtained. He was an honest, peaceable man, as the times went, with a kindly wife, Gudrun by name, and they both took a friendly interest in the hermit's daughter. Estein would fain have lived in her society all day, listening to her talk and watching the wind play with her hair, and every day he noticed, with a sense of growing disappointment, that he saw her more seldom. Sometimes they would have long talks, and then, abruptly as it seemed to him, she would have to leave him, and he would spend his time in fishing from a boat, or would cross with her to Hrossey, and while she went to see Dame Gudrun he pursued the roe-deer and moor-fowl.
With bow and arrow, and by dint of long and arduous stalks, he brought home scanty but well-earned spoil, and then, either by himself, or more often with Osla in the stern, he would cross the sound as the day faded, to a welcome supper and an evening spent in the firelit cell, or to a peaceful night beside the swirl of the tideway under a sky so pale and clear that only the brightest stars were ever seen.
He knew that he was in love, hopelessly in love. Why else should he stay in the Holy Isle after his wounds were healed, and when nothing bade him remain? Far away and faint sounded the echoes of war and the shouts of revelry. Like memories of another life, thoughts of his father, of Helgi, of friends and kinsmen, came to him, pricked him for a moment, and faded into a pair of dark-blue eyes and a tall and slender figure. He still talked to Osla of voyages and battles, and caught her sometimes taking more interest than she would own in some old tale of derring-do, or a story of his own adventures. Yet the actual memories of these things grew fainter, and he talked like an old man telling of his youth.
"I am under a spell," he would say to himself, and stride more quickly over the heather, and then catch himself smiling at the thought of some word or look of Osla's.
The hermit's black mood passed away, and was followed by an attitude of grave distance towards his guest. He spoke little, but always courteously, and seemed to treat him at first merely as an addition to the live stock of the island.
One night Estein, after the manner of the skalds, sang a poem of his own as they sat round the fire. He called it the "King's War Song."
"On high the raven banner
Invites the hungry kites,
Red glares the sun at noon-tide,
Wild gleam the Northern lights;
The war-horn brays its summons,
And from each rock-bound fiord
Come the sea-kings of Norway,
To follow Norway's lord.
"The cloven arrow speeding,
Fraught with war's alarms,
Calls the ravens to their feast,
The Udallers to arms.
See that your helms be burnished,
See that your blades be ground,
When he of Yngve's kindred
Sends the war token round!"
"Skoal, [Footnote: The Norse drinking salutation.] Vandrad! skoal!" cried the hermit.
His hearers looked at him in amazement. His eyes flashed, his lips twitched, the whole man was transformed for the moment into the Viking of the western seas.
"Once I was a skald myself," he said. "You have quickened what I thought was dead." And he rose and walked out into the night.
For a minute they were too surprised to speak. Then Osla said softly,—
"Your magic is too strong, Vandrad." She threw him one glance that lived long in his memory, and quickly followed her father.
For more than an hour afterwards he could dimly see them pacing the shore in silence, her arm within the hermit's.
Next day the old man was more silent and reserved than before, but every now and then Estein saw that his eyes followed him, and the few words he spoke were couched in a kindlier manner.
"Sing to him again," whispered Osla in the evening, and night after night the young skald sang and the hermit and his daughter listened. Sometimes when he was finished the old Viking would talk on various themes. Brief glimpses of his earlier days, snatches of religious converse, his travels, and the strange peoples he had seen, he would touch upon before the evening prayer.
And so the time passed away, till Estein had spent six weeks in the Holy Isle. All the while he had made no open love to Osla. She seemed merely friendly, and he was distracted between a wild desire to break down the barriers between them and a strange and numbing feeling of warning that held him back, he knew not why. So strong was it at times that he fancied two spells cast upon him, one by the island maiden, the other by some unknown spirit.
One morning he found her wandering by the cliffs that formed the seaward barrier of the isle.
"Let us sit here, Osla," he said. "I have a new song to sing you."
"I must bake my cakes," she answered. "Can you not sing it to us to-night?"
"It concerns only you. Sit here but for a moment; it is not long, and you can escape from me when I have done."
"Very well," she said, with a smile and an air of resignation. "I will listen, but do not keep me long."
"If it will tire you, I can wait."
"You can try me."
"I must leave the Holy Isle soon, Osla; I have been too long away from my kinsfolk and my country. It is hard to part, but it must come some day, and these verses are my parting song."
She was silent, and seemed intently plucking sea pinks.
"I cannot tell you why," he went on, "but to-day I feel that my hour has come to rove again. I would that I might live here for ever, but I know it is not fated so."
Then he sang his farewell song:—
"Canst thou spare a sigh, fair Osla? It is fated I must go. Wilt thou think of Vandrad ever When the sea winds hoarsely blow, Or will the memory of my love With absence fainter grow?
"Canst thou spare a tear, sweet Osla, When I sail from this fair land? Wilt thou dream of Vandrad sometimes When the waves boom on the strand? Can visions of a pleasant hour The march of time withstand?
"Osla, when I bear me bravely, 'Midst the lightning of the sword, And the armies meet like torrents When the mountain snows have thawed The thought of thine approving smile Shall be my sole reward.
"Fare thee well, sweet blue-eyed Osla! The sea-king must not stay,
E'en for tresses rich as summer And for smile as bright as May;
But one hope I cannot part from—We may meet again some day!"
"Then are you going?" she said, more softly than he had ever heard her speak before.
"Do you wish me to stay?"
"Not if you wish to rove the seas again, and fight and plunder, as a brave man should," she cried with a flash of raillery. "If it is your fate to go, why should I stand in the way? Am I anything to you?"
She gave him no time to answer, but rose and ran lightly away.