II When the Summer Came Again
Now, when the little fickle summer came again,—and the next year it was splendid,—two young gentlemen sauntered up the sea road to Thor’s Emerald and inquired, in something very like their language, for food and a guide into the mountain and the glacier.
They got food, such as it was,—goat’s milk and flad bröd,—from Christine’s hands, and Christof was their guide—there was none else. And there could be none better. For his childhood had been spent on the glacier and the mountain. He had begot a legend for each crag his fathers had neglected to provide with one.
So he led the daring young gentlemen from the south up into the most sacred of his caves and eyries, and, in the doing, found a wondrous pleasure. They were his age and he loved them; they loved him.
He was the Viking to them—archaic as if born a thousand years before. Upon the mountain he was the animal snuffing rare air. Upon the glacier he was untamed liberty—unassailable as the nature in which it grew. Precisely these were the young travellers to him. For they filled the camp at twilight, and, long after it, the fantastic embers, with the magnificent ghosts of the world from which they came—of which Christof heard now first—treasuring every word.
One evening as he came into camp with the wood he had hardly gathered for their evening fire, the rocks were echoing for the first time in their hoary existence “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Norseman did not understand the song, but he caught the spirit of the singers. The fire was not made. He leaned, rapt, against a crag, with bared head, while they sang it for him in his own language. After that they sang it often together so that he learned it. And, now and then, it came back to them in his almost terrible Norsk words, where he shouted it to the listening mountains. It had taken an almost religious hold upon the guide’s fancy.
It was exactly a week when they returned. They ate once more of the little store of flad bröd, were blessed by the blind Agra, and went, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” back along the sea road, as they had come, loath to leave the young Viking who had stepped out of the tenth century for them.
He watched them out of sight and then choked in his throat. For, at the waving of their hands, where the road was lost to view, all that largess of which they had communed was gone. He thought to run and follow them, but he heard a song—yet turned and strode the beach with a great exultation. The song came nearer, but not more rapidly than his resolution crystallized. And when she who sang came in sight of him, he was looking obliviously out upon the booming ocean, his hand above his eyes, as if trying to pierce the misty horizon which baffled his vision, and where lay that exulting world of liberty.
And she who sung was glad to see him thus. For he was the goodliest being she had ever had in her heart. His tunic was a black wolf’s skin—his legs were swathed in other skins—the fur turned in—and gartered with strips of furred hide—about his neck was a string of wolf’s teeth—on his feet were huge shoes of skin such as his robe—his hair was fair and long—his head was never covered.
She ceased her song and came before him. Yet he gazed.
“Soul of my soul, what seest thou?” she asked.
He came back with a sigh and smile for her.
“‘The Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free.’”
“Nay, for that thou wouldst look at thy feet. For thou standest on the land of the brave. And the home of the free is yonder.”
“The land of a despot,” he laughed, “asking all, giving naught.”
“Then thou art its despot—for it is thy land—thou art its king. Oh, it is small I grant! But it is ours. No other land can ever be. Our fathers dying gave it to us.”
“See!” he cried, turning what the travellers had given him into a prodigal golden shower from his scrip upon the ground.
“What is it?” asked the girl.
“Money. Gold! Enough to take me to their land. They said so.”
“To their land? You?”
At once great fear fell on her.
“It is naught. A little journey by the sea road—a week—and one is there! They come and go each summer. They will come again the next.”
“But thou—thou wilt not go?”
“I will,” he nodded.
“Forsake thy country?”
“Yea.”
“That was our fathers’ basest treason.”
He laughed.
“And thou hast sworn to the priest—”
He laughed again.
“But evil will come from the breach of thy solemn oath—it must. God is not mocked.”
“I have not said that I will break my oath, nor do a treason, beloved one,” he said. “Can one not go and see this wondrous land?”
“Yea. But temptation is in thine eyes.”
He laughed and sighed and answered:
“Yea!”—fingering the strange coins.
Then, tempting her also, he said:
“Come with me thence?”
“I?”
The one little word told him how impossible that was.
“Yea, there are the old and blind and simple to be cared for. I forgot.”
“I covet not that land, my Christof,” said she, “nor any other land than this.”
“Beloved,” said he, solemnly, “our fate draws so near that I can see it. The ice can little longer be held back. And that is death to us and to our small land.”
“Yea,” said she, almost happily.
“Thou dost not wish to live?”
“I? I would live forever, asking but one thing—thy love. Yet, I will die here willingly, because all that I know is here—all life—all death—all joy—all hope and fear. Why, it is not hard, dear love. We have been born to it. Each morning we look first up at the glacier to read if we shall live that day.”
“Our fathers have done ill to keep us here. Ill to stay themselves. What is there here?”
He swept the air with his hand. The sun was setting on the glacier. The mountain seemed all gold. The sea was saffron.
She saw all this and said:
“The very beauty of the Lord is here!”
“A glacier to bury us. Beloved, in a little time the ice will be where we stand. There will be no harvests. No fish. What then? This has been threatened us for many years. But now it comes soon. All creatures but us have fled. And I must find ye first another land, then must ye all fly with me. And I will find it in this rich, this just, this righteous America. That is not wrong.”
She hung her head and sighed.
“What is it in thy mind?” he asked.
All her body flushed in blushes as she answered:
“Thou didst say that when the harvest was taken thou wouldst marry me.”
“Yea,” he cried, touching her, “and that is now! Come to Agra. And when we are married, thou thyself shalt send me forth to seek a home for thee and them that hang on us—in this new land.”
She was not glad for this, yet all her heart sung at being his wife.
“I am so happy that I will not say thee nay to-day—though I would keep thee here to die and sleep upon the mountain with our fathers—though it were but a little while. Yet if thou wilt—why—yes, go—I send thee.”
“Ah, ah,” he cried, “that is like the Viking ladies of the olden time! This country where I go and all its boundlessness are mine and thine and all who come alike. And all its wealth and houses. I will go in haste, and when I have found a pretty nest for thee and all of us, I will come with yet more haste, and when the ice comes down take thee to it. And there I shall be king as here. For there every man is as a king. Have not the pleasant travellers told me so?”
“Oh, Christof, I cannot help my fear! Yet thou shalt go!”
“Look at these mighty hands,” he cried passionately, “look at me! Will there be any braver there? Will any outstrip me in the race for gold and all those things they seem to need out there? Am I not great as they who went away to-day? Yet they have conquered that vast world. But a little time—think! but a little waiting—and no more cold or hunger—fear or death. The little harvest and the fish now caught will give ye food for all the while I stay. And when I come again, yea we shall wait God’s word—But when the ice comes down we shall leave it rotting in its bins and go away to happiness. Come! come to our marriage!”
And so they went away with arms entwined, and, singing, came to blind Agra, who married them.