In Russia England France Germany a writer sat writing. Oh, how well he did his job, and how close I feel to him as I read! What a sharp sense he gives of the life about him! With him one enters into that life, feels the hidden passions of peoples, their little household traits, their loves and hates. There are sentences written by all writers of note in all countries that have their roots deep down in the life about them. The sentences are like windows looking into houses. Something is suddenly torn aside, all lies, all trickery about life gone for the moment. It is what one wants, what one seeks constantly in one’s own craftsmanship, and how seldom it comes. The little faky tricks are always so ready to help over the hard places and when one has used them there is the little flush of triumph followed by—bah! followed always by the sick awakening.
One need not go too far afield to find sentences and paragraphs that stir deeply. No doubt they were in the Indian language before white men came and the first whites on our shores brought the sense of them. There was that Fredis, sister of that Norseman Eric, who had come to America long before Columbus came and had built him a house in Vinland. The sister was a strong-willed woman who bullied her husband and was avaricious for wealth. Came sailing to Greenland the brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi, with a strong ship, and she induces them to go adventuring with her to Vinland but at the very beginning tricks them. She in her ship is to have thirty men and they are to have thirty but unknown to them she conceals an extra five in her own vessel so that in the far land, where are no white men and white men’s laws are unknown, she shall have the upper hand. They get to Vinland and she will not let them stay in the house, built there by her brother Eric, and they go patiently away and build a hut of their own.
Still she schemes. See now with what truth, what fidelity and clearness some old writer tells of what happened. Well, the brothers had the larger and better ship and she wanted that too.
One morning early Fredis arose from her bed and dressed herself, but did not put on her shoes and stockings. A heavy dew had fallen, and she took her husband’s cloak, and wrapped it about her, and then walked to the brothers’ house and up to the door, which had been only partly closed by one of the men, who had gone out but a short time before. She pushed the door open and stood silently in the doorway for a time. Finnbogi, who was lying on the innermost side of the room, awoke. “What dost thou wish here, Fredis?” She answers: “I wish thee to rise and go out with me, for I would speak with thee.” He did so; and they walked to a tree, which lay close by the wall of the house, and seated themselves upon it. “How art thou pleased here?” says she. He answers “I am well pleased with the fruitfulness of the land, but I am ill content with the breach that has come between us, for methinks there has been no cause for it.” “It is even as thou sayest,” says she, “and so it seems to me; but my errand to thee is that I wish to exchange ships with you brothers, for ye have a larger ship than I, and I wish to depart from here.” “To this I must accede,” says he, “if it is thy pleasure.” Therewith they parted, and she returned home and Finnbogi to his bed. She climbed up into the bed and awakened Thorvard (her husband) with her cold feet; and he asked her why she was so cold and wet. She answered with great passion. “I have been to the brothers’,” says she, “to try to buy their ship, for I wish to have a larger vessel; but they received my overtures so ill that they struck me and handled me very roughly; that time thou, poor wretch, will neither avenge my shame nor thy own; and I find, perforce, that I am no longer in Greenland. Moreover I shall part from thee unless thou makest vengeance for this.” And now he could stand her taunts no longer, and ordered the men to rise at once and take their weapons; and they then proceeded directly to the house of the brothers, and entered it while the folk were asleep, and seized and bound them, and led each one out when he was bound; and, as they came out, Fredis caused each to be slain.
Since I had been a boy it had been such passages as the one above that had moved me most strangely. There was a man, perhaps one of Fredis’ men, who had seen a part of what had happened on that dreadful morning in the far western world and had sensed the rest. For such a one there would perhaps have been no thought of interference. One can think of him, the unknown writer of the memorable passage above, as even helping in the dreadful slaying there in the field at the edge of the wood and near the sea, not because he wanted to but because he would have been afraid. He would have done that and later perhaps have gone off alone into the woods and cried a little and prayed a little, as I can imagine myself doing after such an affair. The woman Fredis, after she had got what she wanted, swore all her men to secrecy. “I will devise the means of your death if there is any word of this when we have returned to Greenland,” she said, and after she had gone home with the two vessels loaded and had made up her own lie to tell her brother Eric of what had happened to the brothers and their men in the far place, she made all of her own men handsome presents.
But there was that scribbler. He would put it down. Fear might have made him take part in the murder but no fear could now keep his hand from the pen. Do I not know the wretch? Have I not got his own blood in me? He would have walked about for days, re-living all of that dreadful morning scene in Vinland and then when he was one day walking he would have thought of something. Well, he would have thought suddenly of just that bit about Fredis crawling back into her husband’s bed, after the talk with Finnbogi, and how her cold wet feet awoke the man. He would have been alone in the wood, back there in Greenland, when that bit came to him, but at once he hurried to his own house. Perhaps his wife was getting dinner and wanted him to go to the store but he would have brushed her aside, and sitting down with ink and paper—perhaps in her angry presence—he wrote all out, just as it is put down above. Not only did he write, but he read his piece to others. “You will get yourself into trouble,” said his wife, and he knew what she said was true but that could not stop him. Do I not know the soul of him? He would have gone about boasting a little, strutting a little. “I say now, Leif, that bit, where Fredis gets into the bed and with her cold feet awakens Thorvard—not bad, eh? I rather nailed her there, now didn’t I old man?” “But you yourself helped to do the murder, you know.” “Oh, the deuce now! Never mind that. But I say now, you’ll have to admit it, I did rather put a spike into my scene. I nailed it down, now didn’t I, Leify old chap?”
NOTE VI
WELL, there was my father, there was myself. If people did not want their stories told, it would be better for them to keep away from me. I would tell if I could get at the heart of it—as the fellow who went off to Vinland with Fredis told—and for just the reasons that made him tell. And like that fellow, after he returned to Greenland, I would have to walk alone in the woods or in city streets thinking, trying to think, trying to get all in accord, seeking always just that illuminating touch the Norse story-teller had found when he thought up the bit about Fredis—that about her getting into bed and touching the back of her sleeping husband with the cold feet. The foxy devil! Do I not know what happened after that? First he thought of the two in the warm bed—the determined woman and the startled weak man—with a little jump of delight and then he went back over his story and put that in about her having got up in the first place without putting on shoes and stockings and the cold wet dew on the grass and the log against the wall of the house on which they sat. Now he had got going just right and he knew he had got going just right. What a splendid feeling! It was like a dance. How neatly everything fitted in! Words came—ah—just the right words.
How many times, in these modern days when I have seen how story-tellers and painters have got themselves so often all balled-up with the question of style I have wondered whether the story-tellers among the old Norse and those most marvelous story-tellers of the older Testaments, whether they also did not have their periods of escaping out into words because they had grown weary of seeking after the heart of their stories.
I dare say they stole when they could without being detected as I have so often done. Well, there was the heart of the tale itself. That had first to be got at and then one had to find the words wherewith to clothe it. One got a bit feverish at times and used feverish words, made his telling too turgid or too wordy. One was like a runner who has a long race to run but who is feverishly forcing the pace. How many times I have sat writing, hoping I had got at the heart of the tale I was trying to put down on the paper when inside myself I knew I had not. I have tried to bluff myself. Often I have gone to others, hoping they would say words that would quiet the voices within. “You have not got it and you know you have not got it. Tear all up. Well, then, be a fool and go on trying to bluff yourself. Perhaps you can get some critic to say you have got what you know well enough you have not got, the very heart, the very music of your tale.”