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One night towards morning Ingolf was awakened by the tramping of horses’ hoofs. He had begun to be anxious lest the serfs, who had been away the best part of a month, might have perished, and, springing out of bed, dressed quickly and threw a cloak over him.
Yes, it was Vifel and Karle home at last. When he came out, they were standing outside in the half-light night and talking softly together. They had not yet taken the saddles off the horses. Their manner showed clearly that they were the bearers of evil tidings. Both turned their heads when Ingolf opened the door, but remained standing irresolute, and forgot to salute.
Ingolf stood still for a moment. Then he went up to them, greeted them quietly, and bade Karle take the saddles off the horses and go and sleep. “You had better not talk to any one,” Ingolf concluded, turning to Karle. Then he laid his hand on Vifel’s shoulder and led him round behind the house. There they could best stand and talk undisturbed. Vifel was so silent that stillness seemed to envelop him like an invisible vapour in the air.
When they had come to the back of the house, Ingolf let go of Vifel’s shoulder and leaned against the wall of the house. His first heavy foreboding had quickly turned into a dawning certainty—a certainty which all but overpowered him. For a few interminable moments he remained standing there, leaning against the wall, and staring to the eastward, where a faint flush on the steel-blue vault of the sky announced the coming of the sun. He avoided looking at Vifel, whose expression and behaviour so inexorably revealed what had happened. He shrank from having his last despairing hope annihilated. He must have an interval before he could endure to have his fears, his all but certain foreboding, confirmed by the pitiless word.
The sun rose and was free of the clouds on the horizon before his mind had slowly reached the point that uncertainty was intolerable to him.
He cast a glance at the serf. Vifel stood and wept, silent and motionless. The tears ran in streams over his cheeks, and left light streaks behind them.
“What have you to tell?” Ingolf asked at last, with forced quietude.
“Hjor-Leif’s death,” stammered the serf, with chattering teeth.
There was a long pause. Ingolf had bowed his head, and stood with closed eyes and compressed lips. He wept.
At last, without raising his head or opening his eyes, he gave the serf a sign to continue.
Vifel finished weeping and began stammeringly: “When we came to the point we found the houses empty. We saw no one anywhere. We found the ship in its place down by the shore, but both boats had gone. We began to search the fields and the undergrowth round the point. First we found Hjor-Leif. He lay in a field near the house by the side of a piece of ploughed earth. He had been killed by a stab in the breast. We continued searching, and found gradually most of his men, scattered about in the undergrowth, all dead. Some of them had been obviously stabbed from behind, others had many wounds, which witnessed to a fight having taken place. The serfs and women we saw nowhere.”
“Hjor-Leif had a foreboding of that,” was the thought that passed through Ingolf’s mind when the serf was silent.
Ingolf remained standing quite still. His heart hammered and beat, “Leif! Leif!” At last he lifted his head and looked round him with weary eyes. His look had become very desolate. Otherwise there was nothing to notice in him, now that there was no more doubt and the first strong burst of grief was over.
In a quiet voice he questioned the serf more closely, and learned that he and Karle had buried those of Hjor-Leif’s men whom they had found. Hjor-Leif himself they had covered and left lying where they had found him.
A strange slackness had come over Ingolf. Now and then he roused himself and put a question to the serf. Each time the serf had answered, there was again a long pause.
Ingolf gradually got an account of their journey. Vifel told him of the difficult rivers, of the monks and their temple, and how he and Karle had caught and killed one of Hjor-Leif’s sheep, which they had found in the thicket, as food for their home journey.
Helga was up this morning early as usual. She was generally out before any one else, especially when the weather was bright. It was in the early morning that she could best go out, unseen and undisturbed, to stand and gaze towards the distant mountains in the south-west which hid Hjor-Leif in their blue mist.
This morning, as soon as she stepped out of the door, she heard quiet voices behind the house. She could not distinguish words, but only heard the sound. This half-heard conversation filled her at once with a peculiar fear, and when she recognized Vifel’s voice her heart beat violently. A vague alarm filled her breast and rose choking to her throat. For some time she remained standing and could not move from the spot—stood leaning heavily against the house-wall, and pressed her hand to her heart. Then the voices were suddenly silent. There was stillness behind the house. What could Ingolf and Vifel have to talk about in such a tone? Why had Ingolf not roused her at once? She knew how restlessly he was expecting the serf’s arrival.
At last Helga dragged herself the few steps round the house. She both hoped and feared that she must have made a mistake—that it was not Vifel’s voice she had heard. But she must have certainty. Her fear was crushing her.
Yes, there stood Vifel, and there stood Ingolf. Helga only needed to see them; the first glance told her everything. Ingolf immediately saw his sister, and by a powerful effort succeeded in collecting himself and going quietly towards her. As he went, he said quietly to the serf: “Go and sleep, Vifel. You are a free man.” Vifel departed silently. He did not take the opportunity to thank Ingolf. His highest hope was at last and unexpectedly fulfilled, yet he wept as he went.
When Ingolf had reached his sister he stood still in perplexity. There was in her look a mingling of prayer and certainty which made it impossible for him to say anything. There was a restlessness about Helga which made it impossible for her to stand still.
“Let us go,” she said appealingly. Side by side brother and sister went over the ground without speaking a word.
Where the coppice wood began, they turned and went back towards the houses. So they continued walking to and fro, silently, side by side. The sun had risen, and already stood high.
Ingolf’s men, who had learnt of Hjor-Leif’s death from Vifel, kept within doors. None wished to disturb Ingolf and Helga. Hallveig had been out and glanced towards the pair. Then she had slipped in again to her boy. Helga’s grief made her very heavy at heart.
To and fro, keeping step, Ingolf and Helga went. Helga felt as if she could not stop. As long as she could walk so, keeping herself in movement, it seemed as if there was nothing which had ceased—ended. So long as she had heard nothing, perhaps nothing had happened. There were life and happiness at stake in continuing to walk—to walk, and not stand still.
There was no sobbing in Helga’s breast. It was so empty within. A clammy pressure held her heart imprisoned in apathy. There were no tears in her eyes. She was far past the narrow limits of weeping. Only a great and threatening stillness and emptiness in her soul, and round her a waste wilderness that would swallow her as soon as she stood still.
At last she was so exhausted that she had to drag herself forward with the help of her brother’s arm. Ingolf helped her, supported her, and held her up. He was in great distress. She walked there quivering on his arm, and he had no comfort to give her. Such heavy hours Ingolf had never experienced. He forgot his own sorrow: it was as nothing beside his sister’s mute despair. His whole soul was engrossed in her. His powerlessness, his complete perplexity, his lack of any word to comfort her, drove all other feelings out of his mind.
At last Helga had to give up. Her strength was spent. Exhausted, she sank in his arms. He laid her carefully down, and she remained lying with half-closed eyes, breathing heavily and slowly; then she fell asleep. Ingolf remained sitting by her side and gazing intently on her pale, tired face. She continued sighing in her sleep. Ingolf could not take his eyes from her. “This was what Leif feared,” was the thought that echoed within him. There were not very many thoughts in his brain, stunned as it was by his own and his sister’s grief.
When he had been sitting thus for some time, Hallveig came out to him from the house with her boy on her arm. She could no longer endure the loneliness. She sat down silently by Ingolf’s side. Her eyes were circled with red rims, and there was a peculiar wry smile on her face, called forth by the struggle to keep her tears down. When she had sat a little and looked at the sleeping Helga, she could do no more; she leant her head against her husband, hid her face, and wept.
Little Thorsten prattled cheerfully, and struggled to get down to Helga. Ingolf had to begin to play with him in order to make him sit still. The child’s untroubled chatter cut him to the heart.
Helga slept but a short time. Suddenly she opened her eyes, rose abruptly, and looked about her in bewilderment.
“What is this? Why am I lying here?” she asked in an astonished voice. As soon as she spoke, she felt a choking in her throat, and remembered all of a sudden what had happened, and why she lay there. Then she collapsed with a groan, and remained sitting for a while with her face hidden in her hands. Then she straightened herself abruptly.
“How did it happen?” she asked in a hoarse, uncontrolled voice, and looked straight in front of her with a hard expression on her young face. And when Ingolf did not answer at once, she added in a still more unrestrained tone: “Tell me at once!”
Ingolf told her, hesitatingly and in disconnected words, that his serfs had found Hjor-Leif and his men dead. It looked as if Hjor-Leif’s Irish serfs had killed them.
“But the women?” Helga asked in the same tone as before.
Ingolf gave it as his opinion that the serfs must have taken the women with them to whatever hiding they had sought. He added a few cautious words to the effect that he had grounds for supposing that Hjor-Leif already a year ago had been afraid of what had now happened, and that therefore he had let her remain with him and Hallveig.
Then Helga laughed, if the sound which issued from her throat could be called laughter.
“It is all the same now,” she said in a hard voice.
Then she collected herself and stretched out her hand toward the child. For a while she sat stroking his hair and trying to smile at him. Then suddenly she gave Hallveig the boy and looked up at her brother with a look that revealed all her hopeless despair without disguise, and said: “I want to see him. Can we not go there?”
Her voice was hoarse and passionate as before. There was nothing to recall her former soft and gentle tone, but the hardness was gone.
“We will go as soon as we can,” answered Ingolf quietly.
Helga rose impatiently. She was a little unsteady on her legs, but declined all support both from her brother and her sister-in-law.
“Let us not waste time,” she said irritably, and stumbled towards the houses.
Ingolf and Hallveig followed her in silence. Hallveig took the boy on her arm again.
That same day the ship was launched. Day and night they worked with feverish haste to load it. The next day it lay ready for sea, and in the evening the weather was fair for sailing.
Ingolf wondered a little at Helga. She did not weep. She did not seek solitude. She went about among them much as usual—did her accustomed work, took charge of the boy, and helped Hallveig. Only the change in her voice and her strange, fixed look betrayed her grief—a grief which made Ingolf fear, and troubled him more than any weeping and open despair.