CHAPTER XXV
THE BRIDEGROOM’S TRIUMPH
The short summer was ended and the days were growing cold. The song of the cuckoo was hushed, and the wild geese in the inlets were huddling together and preparing for flight. The cranberries had disappeared from the marshes. The meadows were purple and golden, but fast putting on their accustomed robes of dreary brown.
In the long, low dwelling by the sea the fires had been rekindled, for the air was crisp with frost and the wind of the North was blowing strong. Upon her couch the Mistress was reclining, grim and gray, toothless and unlovely, as of yore. Beside the hearth sat Wainamoinen, the prince of minstrels, sad of face, but resigned and wisely contented. And at her loom the Maid of Beauty plied her daily task, weaving fine blankets for winter wear, and sighing as she looked from her narrow window and out upon the lonely sea and the lonelier land. [[236]]
“Will he ever come?” she murmured, half aloud though speaking to herself; and her mother, Dame Louhi, from her couch echoed her words, “Will he ever come?”
Then suddenly up spoke a little child who was sitting on the floor—a little child too young to walk, too small to know the meaning of his words:
“I see an eagle coming to our house. He is a great eagle, a beautiful eagle. With one wing he fans the air, with the other he flaps the sea. He is coming nearer and nearer; he is hovering above our dwelling. Now he rests upon the roof. He is whetting his beak. He is looking down at our doves. Soon he will fly right into our house. He will seize the best one of all our birdlings—the rosiest, the whitest, the sweetest-voiced, the shapeliest. He will fly away with her; he will carry her far, far away into his own country, there to live with him forever.”
“What does the child mean?” queried the Mistress, rising half-way from her couch beside the fire. “Surely, never have I heard an infant speak in this way.”
“He speaks in riddles,” answered Wainamoinen, [[237]]“yet he speaks wisdom and truth. No doubt we shall understand him soon.”
“True! true!” croaked Sakko, the earth woman, from her snug corner beyond the hearth. “See you not that dark cloud hovering in the sky? It is the wing of the mighty eagle. See you not the shadow that has fallen on our threshold? It is the shadow of the eagle’s noble form. He is peering in. He is looking for the birdling that is his own!”