Only seldom did Leif follow Ingolf to the fields or to other business. Their unconscious inner tension robbed their intercourse of all outer comfort or heartiness. The sense of brotherhood and family feeling between them decreased greatly, and threatened to vanish.
Ingolf be-took himself to work as a defence. He wrapped himself in business as in a coat of mail, and work shielded him to a certain extent. But the unavoidable vacant hours were like rents in his armour. And the weapons Ingolf had to fight against immediately found every exposed place.
Leif was not the man to notice that something had happened when nothing had really done so. He only felt boredom and emptiness, and the difficulty there is in making time pass when like a refractory horse it begins rearing on its hind-legs. Either he sat alone with Helga and let the hours fly, or he simply lay and lazed somewhere, staring into space and wondering what purpose there can be in a useless day. His mind became every day more unbalanced, and his temper was like a sportive squirrel. Sometimes his restlessness and impatience impelled him to tease and vex those who surrounded him. Not even Helga escaped; on the contrary, just because she was the most helpless before him, it was she who suffered most. Not rarely his words made her cry. Afterwards he sat silent and helpless, unable to repair what he had done, and feeling intolerable pain.
Leif's only excuse was that he was Leif and had lost his balance. The hopeless melancholy of youth was upon him.
Years passed and nothing happened. Hitherto each year had had one event. They visited Gaulum, or Atle's sons visited them. One winter Leif and Ingolf were invited to the feast at Gaulum; the next winter they were the hosts. Hitherto in Leif's mind there had been a halo about these feasts; he had awaited them with eagerness and taken part in them with a happy fervour of abandonment. Now he hardly cared to think of them any more, and had quite ceased to take pleasure in them.
For there had gradually risen in Leif's mind, although he carefully concealed it, a strong ill-will against Atle's sons, especially Holmsten. Holmsten had always been a thorn in his side. Holmsten's voice and vocabulary, his smile, his way of being silent, and his whole character had an irritating effect on Leif. At times, when he was not especially sensitive, he could, as it were, lock such feelings out. But there were other times when he stood and actually shivered with irritation merely at seeing and hearing Holmsten. But, faithful to his oath of brotherhood and promise to Ingolf, he suppressed all feelings of that kind as best he could. In any case, they never broke out. Thus it happened that Holmsten once in a humourous mood made merry over Leif's appearance. He meant nothing serious by it, but an innocent remark about Leif's large nose slipped thoughtlessly out of his mouth. When he saw what effect it had upon Leif, who became quite red in the face, he was immediately sorry, and said nothing. When Leif had thus come to know what he looked like, his eyes were suddenly opened to see how handsome Atle's sons were. From that day it was that he began to hate them in his heart, especially the youngest. He now noticed also how they looked at Helga, when they were on a visit. He did not like those looks. Of course he could well understand that they could scarcely keep their eyes from Helga. But Helga was his, and that made a difference. And although Atle's sons could not know that, yet at any rate they ought not to look at Helga so. It was especially Holmsten with whom Leif found himself angry—Holmsten, whose existence from the time that Leif was a boy had rankled like a thorn in his mind. Holmsten was undeniably the handsomest of the brothers, perhaps because he, as the youngest, was now at the handsomest age. Moreover, it was Holmsten whose look fastened on Helga with the greatest pertinacity.
Leif was pained, and suffered. The most intolerable part about it almost was that it was impossible for him to let Helga notice his jealousy. She did not give the slightest occasion for it, but that did not comfort Leif at all—on the contrary. This made Leif's behaviour towards her rough and unintelligible. She was almost obliged to believe that he was no longer as fond of her as he had been, since he at times could do without her. It was only the pain in his look, even when he behaved in the most capricious way, which quieted her doubts. Yet she went about sometimes with such pensive eyes. There sat Leif, with a feeling of emptiness like a man who must see the most precious thing he possesses slip out of his hand, and cannot move a finger. Leif could at times become so anxious about Helga that all gladness and pleasure in life forsook him. Often she looked at him with a questioning and troubled look, and shut herself within herself.
The summer after Leif had completed seventeen and Ingolf nineteen winters, Atle's sons for the first time went on a Viking expedition. That summer was the worst Leif had ever experienced. The want of occupation, and the complete absence of all events, became doubly intolerable now that he knew that other young men, who were not much more than his own equals in age, were sailing out on the wide ways of the sea, making the acquaintance of foreign people and lands, trafficking or fighting with those whom they encountered wherever they went, and, in any case, having new experiences every day and every hour of the day. These thoughts were so painful that Leif at times became quite poorly and depressed when they attacked him.
That summer there arose besides in his distracted and uneasy mind a besetting idea, which, when it had once taken root, was not to be shaken off. Suppose Holmsten should be killed that summer, how would Helga receive the news when she heard it? He could sit silent and watch her for hours at a time in order to discover an answer to this question. Sometimes he introduced the Viking expedition of Atle's sons as a topic of conversation before her. She did not seem specially interested in it, but talked willingly, though without great interest, about it. These conversations gave Leif a strong impression of woman's falsity!