“Curse and stamp as much as suits you,—I should do no friend’s part if I did not deal severely with you. You go not hence until I have given you such a bitter dose as shall cure your mind of that sickness while life lasts in you. So take breath to swallow—”
Randvar let breath go, instead, in desperate protest. “It needs not, lord! I am cured. Could you give me anything to equal her look in bitterness? I am cured from this day forth. Give me leave to go.”
But the Jarl’s outstretched arm made a bar across the path to the door.
“Too sudden is your recovery; it suggests that of a child who sees the medicine-bowl coming his way. It has come to this, that I shall be convinced only when we have talked the matter out at length and—What! wincing already? Is that a sign of sound flesh? Face about, there! You may make up your mind to one of two things: either to answer my questions and so disgust yourself with your folly, or else to listen while I drag your weakness forth into such bright light as—”
“I will answer,” Randvar said between his teeth, and set them hard.
“Begin then by telling me what I think I know already, that she had no reason for believing her dignity trod upon.”
“Who shall say what looks like reason to a woman? If you must know, she had this much cause that on Treaty Day we disputed together about a matter and in an evil hour it happened that I was proved to be right, and when I saw it, I smiled,—no more than a twitching back of the lips, lord! In the same breath I asked her to excuse it! But she left me without a word, refused me admittance when I went to her hall, flouted me when I accosted her—slighted—scorned—Only the Devil who made them knows why women do anything!” He gave the cap a vicious kick as he started to pace the floor.
But Helvin added severely: “And only the Lord who made men knows why they hanker after such creatures! Behold how your own mouth has convicted you of the greatest folly!”
That was all, perhaps, that the song-maker was able to behold, even though his gaze halted here and there upon garments and weapons as he moved restlessly to and fro. At last he cried out for mercy.
“I will confess myself the greatest fool alive if it will save me from your tongue! I know now what I have always suspected, that King Helge in the song wasted his time in avenging it on Fridtjof that he loved the boneless Ingeborg. That love alone was punishment enough—” Like one struck by a new thought, he stopped before the Jarl.