“She has waited for him seven half-years,” said the mother in a low voice. “No marvel if she found courage to look up —”
“Nay, devil damn me if they have waited!” screamed the man, as his wife strove fearfully to hush him.
They were in the narrow passage between the back of the privy and a fence. Lavrans smote with his clenched fist on the beam across the cess-pit.
“I set thee here for a scorn and for a mockery, thou beam. I set thee here that filth might eat thee up. I set thee here in punishment for striking down that tender little maid of mine. — I should have set thee high above my hall-room door, and honoured thee and thanked thee with fairest carven ornament; because thou didst save her from shame and from sorrow — because ’twas thy work that my Ulvhild died a sinless child.…”
He turned about, reeled toward the fence and fell forward upon it, and with his head between his arms fell into an unquenchable passion of weeping, broken by long, deep groans.
His wife took him by the shoulder.
“Lavrans, Lavrans!” But she could not stay his weeping. “Husband!”
“Oh, never, never, never should I have given her to that man! God help me — I must have known it all the time — he had broken down her youth and her fairest honour. I believed it not — nay, could I believe the like of Kristin? — but still I knew it. And yet is she too good for this weakling boy, that hath made waste of himself and her — had he lured her astray ten times over, I should never have given her to him, that he may spill yet more of her life and her happiness —”
“But what other way was there?” said the mother despairingly. “You know now, as well as I — she was his already —”
“Ay, small need was there for me to make such a mighty to-do in giving Erlend what he had taken for himself already,” said Lavrans. “ ’Tis a gallant husband she has won — my Kristin —” He tore at the fence; then fell again a-weeping. He had seemed to Ragnfrid as though sobered a little, but now the fit overcame him again.
She deemed she could not bring him, drunken and beside himself with despair as he was, to the bed in the hearth-room where they should have slept — for the room was full of guests. She looked about her — close by stood a little barn where they kept the best hay to feed to the horses at the spring ploughing. She went and peered in — no one was there; she took her husband’s hand led him inside the barn, and shut the door behind them.
She piled up hay over herself and him and laid their cloaks above it to keep them warm. Lavrans fell a-weeping now and again, and said somewhat — but his speech was so broken she could find no meaning in it. In a little while she lifted up his head on to her lap.
“Dear my husband — since now so great a love is between them, maybe ’twill all go better than we think —”
Lavrans spoke by fits and starts — his mind seemed growing clearer:
“See you not — he has her now wholly in his power — he that has never been man enough to rule himself.…’Twill go hard with her before she finds courage to set herself against aught her husband wills — and should she one day be forced to it, ’twill be bitter grief to her — my own gentle child —
“… Now am I come so far I scarce can understand why God hath laid so many and such heavy sorrows upon me — for I have striven faithfully to do His will. Why hath He taken our children from us, Ragnfrid, one by one — first our sons — then little Ulvhild — and now have I given her that I loved dearest, honourless, to an untrusty and a witless man. Now is there none left to us but the little one — and unwise must I deem it to take joy in her, before I see how it will go with her — with Ramborg.”
Ragnfrid shook like a leaf. Then the man laid his arm about her shoulders:
“Lie down,” he said, “and let us sleep —” He lay for a while with his head against his wife’s arm, sighing now and then, but at last he fell asleep.
It was still pitch dark in the barn when Ragnfrid stirred — she wondered to find that she had slept. She felt about with her hand; Lavrans was sitting up, with knees updrawn and his arms around them.
“Are you awake already?” she asked in wonder. “Are you cold?”
“No,” said he, in a hoarse voice; “but I cannot go to sleep again.”
“Is it Kristin you are thinking on?” asked the mother. “Like enough ’twill go better than we think, Lavrans,” she said again.
“Ay, ’tis of that I was thinking,” said the man. “Ay, ay — maid or woman, at least she is come to the bride-bed with the man she loves. And ’twas not so with either you or me, my poor Ragnfrid.”
His wife gave a deep, dull moan, and threw herself down on her side amongst the hay. Lavrans put out a hand and laid it on her shoulder.
“But ’twas that I could not,” said he, with passion and pain. “No, I could not — be as you would have had me — when we were young. I am not such a one —”
In a while Ragnfrid said softly through her weeping:
“Yet ’twas well with us in our life together, Lavrans — was it not? — all these years?”
“So thought I myself,” answered he gloomily.
Thoughts crowded and tossed to and fro within him. That single unveiled glance in which the hearts of bridegroom and bride had leapt together — the two young faces flushing up redly — to him it seemed a very shamelessness. It had been agony, a scorching pain to him, that this was his daughter. But the sight of those eyes would not leave him; and wildly and blindly he strove against the tearing away of the veil from something in his own heart, something that he had never owned was there, that he had guarded against his own wife when she sought for it.
’Twas that he could not, he said again stubbornly, to himself. In the devil’s name — he had been married off as a boy; he had not chosen for himself; she was older than he — he had not desired her; he had had no will to learn this of her — to love. He grew hot with shame even now when he thought of it — that she would have had him love her, when he had no will to have such love from her. That she had proffered him all this that he had never prayed for.
He had been a good husband to her — so he had ever thought. He had shown her all the honour he could, given her full power in her own affairs, and asked her counsel in all things; he had been true to her — and they had had six children together. All he had asked had been that he might live with her, without her for ever grasping at this thing in his heart that he would not lay bare.…
To none had he ever borne love.… Ingunn, Karl Steinsön’s wife, at Bru? Lavrans flushed red in the pitch darkness. He had been their guest ever, as often as he journeyed down the Dale. He could not call to mind that he had spoken with the housewife once alone. But when he saw her — if he but thought of her, a sense came over him as of the first breath of the plough-lands in spring, when the snows are but now melted and gone. He knew it now — it might have befallen him too — he, too, could have loved.
But he had been wedded so young, and he had grown shy of love. And so it had come about that he throve best in the wild woods — or out on the waste uplands — where all things that live must have wide spaces around them — room to flee through — fearfully they look on any stranger that would steal upon them.…
One time in the year there was, when all the beasts in the woods and on the mountains forgot their shyness — when they rushed to their mates. But his had been given him unsought. And she had proffered him all he had not wooed her for.
But the young ones in the nest — they had been the little warm green spot in the wilderness — the inmost, sweetest joy of his life. Those little girl-heads under his hand.…
Marriage — they had wedded him, almost unasked. Friends — he had many, and he had none. War — it had brought him gladness, but there had been no more war — his armour hung there in the loft-room, little used. He had turned farmer.… But he had had his daughters — all his living and striving had grown dear to him, because by it he cherished them and made them safe, those soft, tender little beings he h
ad held in his hands. He remembered Kristin’s little two-year-old body on his shoulder, her flaxen, silky hair against his cheek; her small hands holding to his belt, while she butted her round, hard child’s forehead against his shoulder-blades, when he rode out with her behind him on his horse.
And now had she that same glow in her eyes — and she had won what was hers. She sat there in the half-shadow against the silken pillows of the bed. In the candle-light she was all golden — golden crown and golden shift and golden hair spread over the naked golden arms. Her eyes were shy no longer —
Her father winced with shame.
And yet it was as though his heart was bleeding within him, for what he himself had never won; and for his wife, there by his side, whom he had never given what should have been hers.
Weak with pity, he felt in the darkness for Ragnfrid’s hand:
“Ay, methought it was well with us in our life together,” he said. “Methought ’twas but that you sorrowed for our children — ay, and that you were born heavy of mood. Never did it come to my mind, it might be that I was no good husband to you —”
Ragnfrid trembled fitfully:
“You were ever a good husband, Lavrans.”
“H’m!” Lavrans sat with his chin resting on his knees. “Yet had it mayhap been better with you, if you had been wedded even as our daughter was to-day —”
Ragnfrid started up with a low, piercing cry:
“You know! How did you know it — how long have you known — ?”
“I know not what ’tis you speak of,” said Lavrans after a while, in a strange, deadened voice.
“This do I speak of — that I was no maid, when I came to be your wife,” said Ragnfrid, and her voice rang clear in her despair.
In a little while Lavrans answered, as before:
“That have I never known, till now.”
Ragnfrid laid her down among the hay, shaken with weeping. When the fit was over she lifted her head a little. A faint grey light was beginning to creep in through the window-hole in the wall. She could dimly see her husband, sitting with his arms thrown round his knees, motionless as stone.
“Lavrans — speak to me —” she wailed.
“What would you I should say?” asked he, without stirring.
“Oh — I know not — curse me — strike me —”
“ ’Twould be something late now,” answered the man; there seemed to be the shade of a scornful smile in his voice.
Ragnfrid wept again: “Ay — I heeded not then that I was betraying you. So betrayed and so dishonoured, methought, had I been myself. There was none had spared me. They came and brought you — you know yourself, I saw you but three times before we were wed.… Methought you were but a boy, white and red — so young and childish —”
“I was so,” said Lavrans, and a faint ring of life came to his voice. “And therefore a man might deem that you, who were a woman — you might have been more afraid to — to deceive one who was so young that he knew naught —”
“So did I think after,” said Ragnfrid, weeping. “When I had come to know you. Soon came the time, when I would have given my soul twenty times over, to be guiltless of sin against you.”
Lavrans sat silent and motionless; then said his wife:
“You ask not anything?”
“What use to ask? It was he that … we met his burial-train at Feginsbrekka, as we bore Ulvhild in to Nidaros —”
“ Ay,” said Ragnfrid. “We had to leave the way — go aside into a meadow. I saw them bear him by on his bier — with priests and monks and armed yeomen. I heard he had made a good end — had made his peace with God. I prayed as we stood there with Ulvhild’s litter between us — I prayed that my sin and my sorrow might be laid at his feet on the Last Day —”
“Ay, like enough you did,” said Lavrans, and there was the same shade of scorn in his quiet voice.
“You know not all,” said Ragnfrid, cold with despair. “Mind you that he came out to us at Skog the first winter we were wedded-?”
“Ay,” answered the man.
“When Björgulv was dying.… Oh, no one, no one had spared me.… He was drunk when he did it — afterwards he said he had never cared for me, he would not have me — he bade me forget it. My father knew it not; he did not betray you — never think that. But Trond — we were the dearest of friends to each other then — I made my moan to him. He tried to force the man to wed me; but he was but a boy; he was beaten.… Afterwards he counselled me to hold my peace, and to take you —”
She sat a while in silence.
“Then he came out to Skog — a year was gone by; I thought not on it so much any more. But he came out thither — he said that he repented, he would have had me now, had I been unwedded — he loved me. He said so. God knows if he said true. When he was gone — I dared not go out on the fjord, dared not for my sin, not with the child. And I had begun — I had begun to love you so!” She cried out, a single cry of the wildest pain. The man turned his head quickly towards her.
“When Björgulv was born — oh, I thought he was dearer to me than my life. When he lay in the death-throes — I thought, if he died, I must die too. But I prayed not God to spare my boy’s life —”
Lavrans sat a long time silent — then he asked in a dead, heavy voice:
“Was it because I was not his father?”
“I knew not if you were,” said Ragnfrid, growing stiff and stark where she sat.
Long they sat there in a deathly stillness. Then the man asked vehemently of a sudden:
“In Jesu name, Ragnfrid — why tell you me all this — now?”
“Oh, I know not!” She wrung her hands till the joints cracked. “That you may avenge you on me — drive me from your house —”
“Think you that would help me —” His voice shook with scorn. “And then there are our daughters,” he said quietly. “Kristin — and the little one.”
Ragnfrid sat still awhile.
“I mind me how you judged of Erlend Nikulaussön,” she said softly. “How judge you of me, then — ?”
A long shudder of cold passed over the man’s body — yet a little of the stiffness seemed to leave him.
“You have — we have lived together now for seven and twenty years — almost. ’Tis not the same as with a stranger. I see this, too — worse than misery has it been for you.”
Ragnfrid sank together sobbing at his words. She plucked up heart to put her hand on one of his. He moved not at all — sat as still as a dead man. Her weeping grew louder and louder — but her husband still sat motionless, looking at the faint grey light creeping in around the door. At last she lay as if all her tears were spent. Then he stroked her arm lightly downward — and she fell to weeping again.
“Mind you,” she said through her tears, “that man who came to us one time, when we dwelt at Skog? He that knew all the ancient lays? Mind you the lay of a dead man that was come back from the world of torment, and told his son the story of all that he had seen? There was heard a groaning from hell’s deepest ground, the querns of untrue women grinding mould for their husbands’ meat. Bloody were the stones they dragged at — bloody hung the hearts from out their breasts —”
Lavrans was silent.
“All these years have I thought upon those words,” said Ragnfrid. “Every day ’twas as though my heart was bleeding, for every day methought I ground you mould for meat —”
Lavrans knew not himself why he answered as he did. It seemed to him his breast was empty and hollow, like the breast of a man that has had the blood-eagle* carven through his back. But he laid his hand heavily and wearily on his wife’s head, and spoke:
“Mayhap mould must needs be ground, my Ragnfrid, before the meat can grow.”
When she tried to take his hand and kiss it, he snatched it away. But then he looked down at his wife, took one of her hands and laid it on his knee, and bowed his cold, stiffened face down upon it. And so they sat on, motionless, speaking no word more.
&nbs
p; * Barons and Wardens, see Note 19.
* Moster = mother’s sister.
* The Holy Blood at Schwerin, see Note 20.
* Marriage Settlements, see Note 21.
* Hatt, see Note 22.
* Stave churches see Note 23.
* Land measurement, see Note 24.
* Linen coif, see Note 25.
* Blood-eagle, see Note 26.
NOTES
1. The Bridal Wreath
THIS was the old Norwegian word (directly borrowed from the English garland) for the gilt circlet which it was the prerogative of maidens of gentle birth to wear, on state occasions, on their outspread hair. In the title of this book it connotes, besides that circlet, the wreath of golden flowers with which the Elf-maiden tempts Kristin (this page), and also the bridal crown (this page), which was an heirloom kept to be worn by brides during the wedding festivities.
2. Jörundgaard, see Plan, this page
The houses of an old Norwegian manor-farm were generally grouped in two adjacent squares or oblongs around the “ind-tun” and the “ut-tun” (the “courtyard” and “farmyard” of this translation). The dwelling-houses and storehouses, etc., lay around the “ind-tun,” and the farm-buildings (barns, cow-houses, goat and sheep-houses, etc.) round the “ut-tun.” The stable divided the two yards, turning one gable to the “ind-tun” and the other to the “ut-tun.” Small buildings of all kinds were erected whenever needed, and when a building, small or large, was no longer needed, it was usually suffered to fall to ruin by decay, unless its site happened to be needed for a new building. To this day the buildings on a big Gudbrandsdal farm may number thirty or forty — old grey wooden houses.
There were usually no fortifications round a mediæval manor, but the houses were joined together by wooden fences, pierced here and there by wicket-gates, and there was a larger gate closing the main entrance to the courtyard. The manor was approached by a so-called “street” (gade) leading up to it between fenced-in cornfields.
The courtyard was of green sward, and the roofs of all houses were thatched with turf — fresh, green, and gay with flowers in wet summers, yellow and dry in dry years, which are common in Gudbrandsdal. All the houses were built of large logs of fir-wood.