The Son Avenger (16 page)

At that moment one of the neighbours’ wives came with the babe, to lay it to its mother’s breast. Cecilia wore only a little vest covering her bosom and arms; as the woman raised her on the pillows, her father had a glimpse of her naked body about the waist, and he saw that her side was all black and blue. At the same time the sun shone in on the bed—there were snatches of brightness between the clouds—and he noticed that her face also bore marks, as of blows.

“Have you hurt yourself?” her father asked after the strange woman had gone.

“Yes, I fell and bruised myself,” said Cecilia. “That is what made him come before his time.”

Olav thought it so far well that a mishap of this sort had caused it—he had been afraid she might have inherited her mother’s infirmity; and no doubt it was this fall that had made her uneasy.

“So then it was you thought of sending this Finn for me?”

Cecilia was silent for moment, as though reflecting:

“I did not ask him to go either—but perhaps he thought he owed me gratitude. And then maybe he took it into his head to repay me thus—when he heard I had fallen and hurt myself—”

“I wonder, though,” said Olav, “whether he be yet returned—
have you heard? He was to borrow a horse of ours, so I could take it back with me.”

“Finn will take good care that you have the horse back. But to tell the truth, Father, I do not think we shall see him at Gunnarsby. They are stricter with their servants here than we are wont to be, and as Finn ran off from here without asking leave—”

“Did he so?”

Cecilia nodded. “I wish I knew,” she said, “what he will do with himself now. He has been a trusty man to me.”

“Perhaps you wish me to take him into my service at Hestviken?” Olav asked.

Cecilia was silent for a moment, looking down at the child at her breast.

“Nay,
that
I wish not at all,” she then said in her curt little voice.

Next day the boy was baptized, and Olav intended to return home on the day after. But in the evening, as he was about to bid his daughter good-night, he chanced to be alone with her for a moment. Then he made up his mind to ask her.

“Tell me now, Cecilia, while we are alone—have you aught on your mind that you would fain tell me?”

“No, I have not,” said the young wife firmly. Seeing that her father looked disappointed, she gave him her hand. “But, for all that, I am glad you came, Father!”

On the morrow Olav set out for home. He had left the parish itself behind him and was now riding uphill by the bank of a little stream, on both sides of which were small farmsteads in the midst of green meadows. He was deep in thought when his horse gave a sudden start—a man had risen abruptly from beneath some bushes at the edge of the bridle-path. It was that Finn.

They exchanged greetings. But as the man said nothing, Olav thought he must.

“It turned out not so ill as you foretold, my friend,” he said kindly. “My daughter is now in good case, and yesterday we christened Kolbein Jörundsson.”

“Ay, so I have heard.”

“Are you on your way down to Gunnarsby?” asked Olav.

“Nay, I am bound southward,” said the man. He had slept at one of the little farms yonder, where he was known.

Olav reflected that it was this Finn who had brought him the
news of his grandson’s birth, so to speak. He said so and thanked him for it. He had brought with him ten English florins
²
that he had had by him since his voyage to England—to make a suitable altar-offering if there should be need of such. He now took out the two he had left and gave them to Finn.

The man accepted them, hesitating a little. Then he stood looking at Olav, and Olav sat looking down at him. Neither of them spoke. At last Olav said he must be getting on. “Maybe we are going the same way?”

They were, said the man. So Olav made Brunsvein go at a foot’s pace, and Finn walked at his side, and not a sound was heard but the gurgling of the brook in its turf banks and the horse’s hoofs when they struck a stone, and the faint summery murmur in the tree-tops; and the sun beat down, gleaming upon the foliage—and both men kept silence.

Once Olav asked if the other had had the loan of a horse from Hestviken, and Finn answered no, he had preferred to walk. After a while Olav asked whether Finn was from these parts, and Finn answered no, he came from Ness in Raumarike. With that their talk came to an end.

When they had journeyed together for an hour or more Finn said he must turn aside here—he pointed along a little path that led up a hill. So Olav thanked him for his company, and Finn thanked in return and was gone into the wood.

Afterwards Olav regretted that he had not tried to find out something. But he had shrunk from cross-questioning his daughter’s serving-man.—So he rode on at a brisker pace.

Olav had had to promise that he would look in again at Hestbæk on his way home. And this time they did not let him go so soon—it was six years since he had last been to see his kinsfolk here, said Arne, “and ’twill surely be six years ere you come again—and then I shall be under the sod.”

Arne Torgilsson was now over eighty winters old, but his age sat none too heavily on him. He was like his father, Torgils Foul-beard, as he might have been had he not lost his wits; Arne was rather a small man, but handsome and well built; his hair and beard were white as bog-cotton, and his florid cheeks and sea-blue eyes showed brightly in the midst of all this whiteness. Torgunn, his
youngest daughter, carried on the farm together with her sons; she had been widowed many years already.

Arne gave a grunt when Olav told him that Cecilia had borne a son.

“Then ’twill be the same as here—none but a daughter’s son to succeed you at Hestviken! To me God would not grant a son, in spite of my prayers and vows—you had one, and he has turned barefoot friar. You, Olav, who are so rich and have always stood so well with the priests, could you not have sent to Rome and been given dispensation? Then you might have married Torgunn and carried on the Fivil race
³
in our old home.”

“Could you not have thought of that before, kinsman,” said Olav with a laugh, “ere Torgunn and I were old folk?”

Olav had to stay at Hestbæk till the third day. It was near sunset when he came riding out to Hestviken. The sky was full of clouds, which shone and blazed and cast red and yellow reflections in the waters of the fiord. The rays of the sinking sun shot out aslant, and the long shadows fell fitfully across the meadows, so that Olav could not distinguish plainly who it was that came toward him through the fields; but there was something both familiar and strange in the tall, broad-shouldered figure, and the cut of his dress had a courtly air ill suited to the place. By the man’s side walked a gigantic he-goat, black as coal, with a huge pair of horns.

Then Olav saw that it was Eirik—Eirik who came to meet him in a particoloured jerkin, half red and half yellow, so short and tight that Olav thought it unseemly; he had a leather belt about his waist, with a long dagger, a knife, and a pouch hanging from it. The dark, curly hair had not yet grown so long as to hide the tonsure. Olav could not quite rid himself of his first impression, something devilish in the vision that presented itself, even when he had recognized the goat as their own old he-goat.

Olav reined in his horse. Eirik ran forward the last few steps, laid his hand on his father’s saddle-bow, and asked, looking up at him:

“Father-is she dead?”

“Cecilia? Nay, she is well.” In silence they continued to look
at each other, Eirik growing ever redder and more distressed. But there was no help for it, he had to speak out himself:

“I have come home, Father,” he said in a tone of supplication. “As you see.”

“I do see,” Olav jerked at the reins, so that Eirik had to stand aside, but he walked beside his father’s horse up to the houses.

Olav dismounted in the yard, replying to Tore’s and Ragna’s questions concerning Cecilia. Then he turned to the house door, where Eirik stood outside, waiting. The son followed his father in. Olav flung off his cloak, laid aside his arms; not till then did he turn to Eirik.

“Where have you come from?”

“You know that well,” said Eirik in a low voice. “I left home—the convent, I mean—yestermorn—had the loan of a boat from Galfrid—”

“Have you lost heart for the cloistered life?” Or—have the friars sent you away? Have you done amiss, so that they will not have you?” asked Olav harshly.

Eirik was crimson in the face; a quiver as of pain passed over his features. But he answered very meekly: “The brethren thought I was not intended for the life. For you know, Father—’tis for that one has the year of probation—and my year was up two months ago. I was loath to part from my brethren; they let me stay awhile longer. But then they told me they believed I was not meant for a monk—I could better serve God if I lived in the world.”

“You were to live in the world and serve God?” There was icy scorn in his father’s voice. “Little must those brethren know you!”

He saw that his son shrank a little. But then Eirik answered as meekly as before: “Nay, Father—my brethren know me best of all—my father, Brother Einar, and the guardian. I shall not forget what they have taught me. Think not I am come home to take up that—iniquitous—life I led before. I—I—they have adopted me as their brother—as a brother
ab extra.
And you yourself know best that a man may live in the world and yet be mindful of his Redeemer and serve Him.”

Olav stood looking at the young man in silence.

“What is this for—what garb is this?”

Eirik blushed again, all cramped and pinched in the ridiculous finery that was too tight and skimpy in every way.

“They gave it me in the convent,” he said humbly. “They had
received it as a gift, and they all agreed to give it to me—that I might avoid falling into debt in the town for clothes to go home in.”

“Ah.”

Then Ragna came in with the food, and the household followed her to take their meal. Olav talked with his folk, but said no more to Eirik—scarce looked at him.

When the meal was ended Olav had ale and mead brought in—bade his house-folk drink to the welfare of Kolbein Jörundsson. Eirik accepted the horn, drank to his nephew’s honour, and let it go further. But next time it came round to him, he let it pass, and soon after he stole quietly out of doors.

He must be gone to say his hours, said Ragna with feeling—he kept his hours and wore a great rosary round his neck underneath his jerkin.

It only stirred Olav to deeper scorn and anger when he heard it.

O
LAV’S
exasperation had settled on him, as it were, at first sight of his newly returned son. He had accustomed himself to think of Eirik as though he were already half a saint, and utterly unlooked-for his son came strolling toward him across the fields at home, ridiculously tricked out, with a stinking black he-goat as companion.

And then came the thought of all the difficulties that Eirik’s fickleness would bring in its train. A settlement with these barefoot friars he must have too. According to their rule he thought they could not accept any endowment from the men who sought admission to their fraternity, so all that they had received when Eirik went to the convent had been given as alms; Olav could not demand its return. But if they tried to claim anything of what he had promised them when Eirik became a monk, then—! Olav was now angry with the whole crew of them; first they had strengthened Eirik in his purpose as much as they could, and then—if indeed he could place any reliance on what Eirik himself said—they had supported him again when he began to have scruples and to doubt his calling to the monastic life.

But there was something worse than this. It was Eirik’s determination to forsake the world that had induced Jörund Rypa to come forward with his suit—it was impossible to doubt that. And in spite of all, Olav was not so sure—not even after his last journey to Gunnarsby—that Cecilia’s happiness was fully assured among the Rypungs. If, then, they were justified in thinking that her kinsmen had not dealt quite honestly by them—

Olav said something of this to Eirik one day. He saw that it made his son unhappy.

“But ’tis not unheard of,” replied Eirik meekly, “for a novice to be found unfitted to live according to the Rule.”

Olav made no reply to this. What Eirik said was true, but then most of those who entered the cloister became monks and nuns in due time, and Eirik had been so zealous when he took the habit last year, and he had formed his determination to become a monk without persuasion or pressure from anyone.

“’Tis not sure either that I shall ever marry,” he then said.

“Is it not? Do you think then to take up your old evil courses again?”

Eirik turned red as fire. But he answered calmly and mildly: “But you, Father, you have lived as becomes a Christian man in all these years since our mother died—although you have neither married again nor taken to yourself a leman.”

“I?” exclaimed Olav, revolted. “I was a man well on in years. And not even in my youth was I known in the stews or in the haunts of dicers—”

Still Eirik spoke composedly: “I promised Father Einar, when I parted from him, that I would keep myself from dicing and overmuch drinking. Will you not believe, Father, that I have learned
something
good and profitable in this year I have dwelt under Saint Franciscus’s roof and prayed every day in the presence of God Himself in the mystery of His holiest sanctuary?”

“Ah, well,” muttered Olav, somewhat ashamed. “Time will show, Eirik—how long you hold to
these
resolutions.”

“You should not say such things!” Eirik sprang up and went out.

But it seemed only to increase Olav’s irritation that Eirik to all appearance had now turned pious and meek. He never allowed himself to be goaded into an angry answer, he neither boasted nor
told fabulous stories. His father kept him so strictly now that Eirik owned nothing he could call his own. Olav himself had always been a generous giver of alms, but none of his gifts to the poor and sick were allowed to pass through Eirik’s hands. Eirik devised a means, however: he rendered many charitable services to his house-mates and to folk who passed through, showing thereby his humility and goodwill. That too was a vexation to his father, and it vexed him every time he noticed that Eirik withdrew himself apart, went down among the rocks by the waterside or into one of the outhouses to say his prayers alone. He told his beads daily and said the little hours of our Lady, most of which he now knew. By degrees Olav discovered that Eirik had set up little crosses here and there on the outskirts of the manor, in the places he frequented for saying his prayers.