In the Wilderness (15 page)

Snow was still lying under the north walls of the houses, and presently the lads took to snowballing. Olav paid no great attention to them, but there was one who showed up among the other lads; he was the tallest of the company and handsome in a way, red and white like milk and blood, with long, smooth straw-coloured hair. Eirik kept close to this lad and helped him.

But after a while Olav saw that all the other boys had joined in attacking Eirik; they belaboured him with snowballs and barred
his way to the drift, so that he had none to throw back. The tall lad stood looking on.

Then Eirik made a dash between the byres. The hollow behind the outhouses was still full of snow. Eirik jumped into it and began making snowballs, which he hurled at the crowd of his pursuers. And now Olav stepped behind the outhouses to see what would happen.

Eirik shook off the first enemies who leaped down on him; plunging through the crust so that he sank to the middle in the wet snow, he pulled himself out of the hollow and onto a ledge of the rock behind. From there he sent fistful after fistful of turf and loose stones at the heads of his assailants, who replied with snowballs. There was a great shouting at this—evidently the game was about to take an angry turn.

A snowball caught Eirik in the eye, making him duck and put up his hand. At that moment the tall fair boy who had stood aloof jumped up and threw his arms round Eirik. He flung him headforemost into the snowdrift, and all the other boys threw themselves on him and ducked him in the filthy snow, yelling and laughing the while, as Eirik howled with rage, half-stifled under the heap.

Olav came a few steps nearer—the tall fair boy caught sight of him and said something to the others. They got up at once.

Eirik got onto his feet; he was bleeding at the mouth, and he turned to the tall boy, shrieking frantically:

“A dirty clown you are—call yourself a man! I—I helped you—” he was crying with rage.

Olav noticed that the tall fair boy looked strangely foolish now, as he blinked and turned away from Eirik’s father. But all the other lads made haste to get out of the hollow. Olav followed slowly; on reaching the yard he saw the whole band of them up by the barn making for the east. They had neither taken leave nor thanked him for his hospitality.

Eirik stood just behind his father. He was still panting as he pressed a snowball, now against his swollen eye, now to his bleeding lip.

“Who was he, that fair lad?” asked Olav.

“Jörund Rypa.” Eirik snuffled and swallowed; he was staring at the band as they disappeared in the darkness toward Kverndal.

“Jörund? Have they that name anywhere hereabouts?”

Eirik replied that Jörund came from a great farm to the eastward, by Eyjavatn, but he had an aunt who was married at Tjernaas and kinsfolk at Randaberg; he was often there.

Olav shook his head unconcernedly; he knew little of these folk and had never spoken with them.

After supper the men sat in the hall; they had brought in some saddlery and implements to put in order for the spring work of the farm. Once on waking from his own thoughts Olav heard his house-carls laughing and sneering, while Eirik poured out an impetuous tale:

“—when they came and set on me all at the same time, what could I do? Do you think I could not have thrown every single one of them, if we had met on level ground?”

“Oh, ay, surely. You would have done that.”

“And I kept them off me a long time—”

“But then you had such help from that brave foster-brother of yours, Eirik,” laughed one of the men.

Eirik was instantly silenced. Olav saw that the boy’s lips quivered; he was pressing back the tears and trying to look unconcerned.

Olav felt with latent anger that there was something wrong in this—that the house-carls dared to taunt and slight the son of the house while his father was by. Eirik was no longer a little boy. So he put down what he had in his hands, stretched himself, and yawned:

“Nay, men—’tis already late. Time to go to rest.”

When father and son were left alone in the hall, Olav came and stood before Eirik. The lad sat on the bench Weeping quietly.

“You must have done with this now, Eirik—this childish boasting—so that the serving-folk think they may make a fool of you.”

As the boy made no answer, but simply sat there struggling with his tears, Olav went on, rather more harshly:

“And you ought to be ashamed to cry because you got a beating!”

Eirik snuffled once or twice. “I am not crying because I got a beating!”

“What are you crying for, then?”

“Jörund—” Eirik swallowed. “We had promised each other
loyal fellowship for life—we took the oath of blood-brotherhood last autumn and—”

“What nonsense is this?” asked his father rather scornfully.

Eirik explained with sudden eagerness. They had met at church one Sunday in the autumn, and then Eirik had spoken of something he had lately heard: that it was a custom in old days for friends to bind themselves by an oath of blood-brotherhood. Jörund was willing. But every time they got so far as lifting the strip of turf on the points of their spears, it broke to pieces, and at last Jörund lost patience—and then Sira Hallbjörn came out, and he was very wroth when he saw all the holes they had dug in his calf paddock.

Olav shook his head in despair. “What folly!”

Eirik was standing with one foot on the hearth, close to the glowing embers, and a cloud of steam came from his shoe. The boy looked so melancholy with his tall, weedy body, his long neck, and the dark, curly head bent down—everything about Eirik was young and slight. Olav had a sudden desire to show the boy a kindness.

“Do not scorch your shoe—’twill be hard as a board tomorrow.” Olav handed him a pair of his own shoes. “You may have the loan of these tomorrow—stuff straw in your own, so they may dry slowly.”

Eirik thanked him cheerfully, and Olav began to pull off his clothes. Presently the boy cried out with a laugh:

“Father, I have outgrown your shoes now—look here.”

It was true. Ah yes, his own feet were unusually small. And Eirik looked like being large-limbed.

Olav lay long awake; the thought of Eirik galled and troubled him.

In these last years—nay, ever since his relations with Torhild Björnsdatter took that unfortunate turn—he had shunned the boy, almost without premeditation. Eirik
was
there, but the less he thought of it, the better.

But this last winter it had seemed as if Eirik sought to thrust himself on his father’s attention. At first Olav believed this was the result of the lad’s having run loose a whole summer without any man’s hand over him; now he must quickly find some means of quelling these loud-voiced ways that the boy had got into. But
Olav was startled to see, with great surprise and little joy, that he was no longer able to relegate Eirik to that outer sphere of his father’s life to which the lad had so long been banished. It was clear that he would have to devote more care to the boy’s training, cordially as he disliked the thought. He saw all the lad’s faults and failings, and things could not go on as now—when their inferiors showed openly that they, too, saw them. Eirik had now reached an age when it was only seemly that he should mix with other men in his father’s company. But then Olav would have to see that the lad was shown the respect due to their position.

But Eirik himself had little sense of how to behave himself. At home he mixed with the servants of the house: one day he was their familiar, childish and fatuous; the next he put on a proud and lofty air—but the folk only made fun of this before the boy’s very eyes.

The worst thing, however, was that he haunted Rundmyr early and late. The place had become a vile den since Liv and Arnketil had gone there. Egil and Vilgard, his younger brother, were also housed there now, and they brought in others of the like sort. It came to Olav’s ears that Eirik had actually joined in dicing with folk who came in from the highways, all kinds of vagabonds, both men and women. He took the lad to task for it, chiding him sharply. Then to Olav’s unspeakable surprise Eirik turned insolent and answered back. Olav simply took hold of the boy’s neck, forced his head down, and flung him aside—but he liked doing it no better, as he felt how weakly and as it were disjointedly the lad collapsed under his hand. And the expression of Eirik’s eyes, at once cowed and malicious, aroused violent repugnance in Olav, though at the same time he felt pity for the weakling.

There was another matter that troubled Olav tonight. He had guessed well enough what Una had in her mind when she came down to the boats on leaving the Thing and asked him to take her with him. And he had been right—when they came ashore she had contrived to be alone with him by the boathouses. Then she told him in plain words: there were now other suitors for Disa Erlandsdatter. But both she and Torgrim would rather that Olav won the bride.

Olav thought he had given no very definite reply, but now he could no longer avoid making them a plain answer. And doubtless
it would lead to some cooling of friendship between him and his kinsfolk when he showed so little appreciation: he saw clearly enough how kindly they had meant it when they as good as offered him Torgrim’s rich cousin in marriage. And assuredly the whole neighbourhood had heard of the matter. Olav saw now that he ought to have let them know long ago that he did not wish to marry again.

They had every right to complain that he had rewarded their loyal spirit of kinship with disdain. Since he had been a widower there had been a revival of intercourse between him and his kinswomen, the daughters of Arne, and their husbands. And now too he remarked that his neighbours seemed to smooth the way for him; did he wish it, he could now come forward and resume the position that the master of Hestviken ought to occupy in the district. Together with his kinsmen by marriage at Skikkjustad and Rynjul he could acquire both power and honour in the hundred. And he liked both Torgrim and Baard—ay, Baard he liked better than most men.

It was the daughters of Arne and their husbands who stood in the background and induced people—those who had their boats and boathouses on his beach—to come forward and suggest that all the old questions that had been left undecided, as to the rights to the different estates, his share in the catches of fish, and such matters, might just as well be settled now. There were many things that Olav had let drift for years, because he felt lonely and overburdened. And his neighbours and others, who had been wont to make the lower road down to the creek, keeping away from the manor on the hill, now found occasion to visit his house and enjoyed such hospitality as had been shown in former days at Hestviken. Perhaps it was not unnatural—it had been reasonable enough that folk kept away from the house so long as its mistress lay there sick and disabled.

But now Olav was offered an opportunity of retrieving—ay, he might just as well be frank about it—he could now recover all it had cost him to be Steinfinn Toresson’s foster-son and Ingunn’s bridegroom. But he
would
not!

Disa was rich, of good family; her first marriage had added to her repute, and she had inherited Roaldstad and its wealth from her two little sons who had been drowned a year or two before in the breaking up of the ice. Her age agreed with his—some thirty
years. And if she was not a lady of surpassing beauty, she was far from ugly, a shapely, kind, healthy, and cheerful woman. Never again would he be offered so good a match. If he did not grasp at her with both hands, it would be deemed by all that he did not desire his own welfare. And he liked the young widow, the little he had seen of her.

But he would not marry Disa Erlandsdatter. It was not the same as when he refused Torhild; that he had done under compulsion, he knew not of what. From time to time desire came upon him when he thought of Torhild—he longed to embrace her great wholesome body as a man bleeding to death longs to quench his thirst. And he would be sick with impatience to place everything in her capable hands when he himself had to wrestle with matters that properly came under the care of the mistress of the house. He had renounced her because he felt he must, whether he desired her for himself or not.

But at the thought of Disa dwelling here at Hestviken, meeting him at his own door, of his having to listen to all that she said and and answer her—no, then he knew he would not—not if she brought him all the gold there was in Norway. He shuddered with aversion at the thought of having her sleeping here between himself and the wall through the long, sleepless nights. At such times he could not possibly bear to have an entirely strange woman close to him. Torhild—if she had been sleeping by his side now, he knew that whether asleep or awake her loyal heart would be full of care for his welfare; he would not feel ashamed with her, were his mind never so restless.

So it was: he often thought it hard that an instinct which he did not himself understand forbade him to fetch home the lowly Torhild and resume his concubinage with her. But his whole being rebelled if he did but call to mind that his best and most faithful friends sought to have him married to the rich and virtuous widow of Svein of Roaldstad.

He remembered having once thought that in the end it might turn out that his life would shape itself after the manner of this—happiness. When it began to dawn on him that Ingunn was not destined for a long life. At that time he had thrust such thoughts from him as infidelity. But then she
was
here, she was his wife, and behind every grey and evil day and every fresh misfortune, every fresh drop of bitterness that fell into his cup, he had known
that he would rather have the life he had, with Ingunn, than any other lot without her.

But now she was gone. And it would cost him but a word to acquire Roaldstad and wealth, a healthy and capable wife, heirs to all they might possess in common, a firm alliance with the kinsfolk whom he liked, a powerful position in the district. And then Olav felt that rather than have all this happiness he would
die
.

The brightness had passed from Ingunn’s memory since that adventure in London; it was as though he could no longer keep her distinct from the other. All seemed blind, unthinking, bestially stupid—that she had frittered away the happiness of both, that he himself had strayed from every path he should have followed, till he now felt as though his own soul were nothing but a little grey, hardened stone.