The voices died away in the distance, and there was a moment of silence in the cozy nest--a warm, muffled, secret kind of silence, broken by nothing but the underthrob of the ceaseless sea. Thora closed her eyes and held her breath. How happy she was! She was trembling like a bird caught and held in the hand, but even her fear was full of happiness.
At the next moment there was a noiseless footstep on the floor, a sense of somebody in the room, and then--Oscar was leaning over her and kissing her on the lips.
PART III
Yet ah, that spring should vanish with the rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows?
I
The wedding being over, and the wedding party gone, Anna went on a visit to Magnus in order to bear him company during the first weeks of his first winter, and to see that his house was in order.
The farm was thirty-odd miles from the capital, not far from the scene of the sheep-gathering and in the middle of the great plain of Thingvellir--an historic spot, formerly the place of the Icelandic parliament, for the neglected Mount of Laws may still be seen there.
There were only two houses on the plain--the farmhouse and the parsonage, with its little church beside it. The farmhouse was the larger of the two, and being on the line of road from the capital to the chief market of the Northland it had become a resting place for travelers.
The Inn-farm had belonged to Anna's family for many generations and her father had been the last to hold it. He was a worthy man, silent and serious, much like Magnus in personal character, but he left the place badly embarrassed, having fallen into the hands of a defaulting factor. After his daughter married he lost his wife and then he died suddenly--people said of drink. Since then the estate had been twenty years in the hands of a steward, but the Governor had paid off the mortgage out of the savings of his salary and the farm was free.
It was an endless delight to Anna to bring the place back to its former condition. She began with the sleeping accommodation, for sin comes with a laugh, she said, but goes with a cry. The shepherd and his wife she put in the upper bedroom (the Badstofa), the maids in the lower one, and the farm-boys in the loft. Each of the rooms was under its own roof, and the homestead as a whole was less like a single house than a group of houses, or like a gipsy encampment, with its peaked tents going off in different directions. The principal apartment was a large square hall, with two guest-rooms opening out of it. Magnus was to sleep in one of these guest rooms, except when both were wanted for travelers, and then he was to lie on a mattress stretched on the floor.