His hands tearing at his collar to relieve the swelling agony of his throat, he had taken a dozen blind steps towards the silent pile before his senses came back to him, before he thought to ask himself what good would come of it even should he succeed in making his way to her. She armored in pride, and he an outlawed man! Like a sail which the breeze has deserted, his head sank; he stood becalmed.
When he looked up again, the lines of his white face had hardened as iron settling in a mould.
“Once in his lifetime it is well for a man to tell himself the truth,” he said. “To lose me will strike as near her heart as though she had lost a jewel from her ring—no nearer. Once she might look for it, once frown over the loss, once speak regretfully of it,—and that is soon over! The memory of my arms around her, the fire of her lips on mine, the dream of possessing her—what more could I hope for? For the dreamer, a dream-bride! It is well-befitting!”
A smile curled his lips that was new and ill to see, as he looked his last upon the shrine of her he loved. Then he turned and walked on rapidly over the tree-guarded path that led eventually to the shadow of the wall and the western gate.
From a distance he glimpsed again the gray-cloaked beggar, outstretched as if in slumber; but he saw no other living thing until he saw the black-robed priest move across the bright court and pass out of the gate ahead, the sentinel making him reverent salute. Even though it had been foretold him, it deepened his sense of belonging no more to the living world that when he himself reached the exit the man remained gazing fixedly at the sky, and he dared neither greet nor touch him as he passed.
The gate gained and left behind, his instructions were exhausted; and he would have halted to plan further but that out in the radiant lane he found the Shepherd Priest awaiting him, his heavy shock of hair turned into a silver glory around his swarthy face. Moving down the dewy path beside him, the old man began at once to speak:
“One thing I think needful to say, my son; and that is that I should not be less afraid of taking this second step than of taking the first one, if God had not given me to see most plainly what His will is. I want you to know that one week ago He moved the Jarl’s heart to speak and call me as witness that he had solemnly consented in your espousal of his sister.”
Randvar could not have replied if he would.
His gaze had gone ahead to a blossoming crab-tree that leaned over the low stone wall and canopied half the lane. Masses of snowy bloom were its branches, and snowed over with petals was the earth beneath it, but that white shape moving before it—was that only another branch blowing in the soft night wind? Coming to meet them, it looked like a girl in a thrall’s robe of white wool; but the queenful poise of the head—the glint of red-gold hair as the light fell upon it—He put out a hand and gripped the old priest’s shoulder.
“Tell me how much this means?” he demanded.