“Jarl, I am five weeks too slow in telling you that a great mistake has been made. It is the truth that horror drove me mad that day, but not horror of you,—never of you! Listen! Even as I stepped from the bushes and saw the Pool and saw you—”
On the Songsmith’s lips, Helvin’s hand fell lightly. Wincing, he had turned away.
“Let not that be put into words which in thought alone is more than I can bear!” he said. “Besides, to what end is it? I know that it was not from me that you shrank, but from the devil that uses my body; and for any hatred you feel towards that, or harm you do it—if ever you come together, which God avert!—you need have no remorse. Though all your power were bent upon it, you could never hate it—abhor—”
A shuddering fit shook him, so that words became but bubbles of sound bursting idly on his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was very low.
“Bitter is it to speak of! For love’s sake, spare me the need. I know now that—even with that vision before your eyes—your song-maker’s spirit was able to separate me from the Thing which Fate has linked me to. Had not myself experienced it, I would not have believed any man brave enough to make that separation. Times there are when I cannot make it; when I loathe myself as Satan never loathed himself, else would his heart change and the world be sinless! I call your help no more than it is when I tell you that I should die of self-horror if I could not look at you and say, ‘I am not beyond the pale, for here is a man who gives me friendship and honor even while knowing the worst of me!’” His voice, which had sunk to an unsteady breath, was smothered out as he pressed his face against the rough bark of the tree.
The Songsmith did not use the opportunity, however, to finish the explanation he had begun. Instead, he stood staring down at the sleeping camp and weighing the possibility of seeming to have this knowledge, foreseeing the blind maze he should enter on, the sword he should hang over his life, the horror to which he should bind himself.
It was Helvin who ended the pause, as he had made it. Turning, he laid both hands on Randvar’s shoulders, and as he spoke, looked lovingly into his face.
“Good is your singing and your service, but your friendship is worth still more! Such it is, that no reward can match it,—the joy of giving must be its own reward. Only can I tell you what it has meant to me that never hoped to know the support of a friend. When my dreams were brightest, I dreamed only of getting good-will by hiding the truth. What makeshift would that have been! What peace is this! Greater loss to me than to you would it have been if you had lost your life to-day. My friend, I do not ask that this may be forgiven me, for that would be to own that it was I who sought to work you harm, and that fiend was not I. Yet this I will say, that I should think it the best gift I ever got if you could tell me with a whole heart that this has not caused any breach to rise in our friendship.”
After a little, the Songsmith raised his bowed head and met the gray eyes steadily.
“My love is great, lord, towards many men,” he said, “but towards none so much as you. Till my death-day, I will hold to my faithfulness to you.”