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 the 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 had it 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 had 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 candlelight 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:
“Aye, methought it was well with us in our life together,” he said. “Methought ’twas but that you sorrowed for our children—aye, 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.”
“Hm!” 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 today—”
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: “Aye—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—”
“Aye,” said Ragnfrid. “We had to leave the way—go aside into a meadow. I saw them bear him 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—”
“Aye, like enough you did,” said Lavrans, and there was the same shade of scorn in his
