In the Wilderness

by Sigrid Undset

  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.

  Since that night after the pilgrimage all the thoughts he had struggled with seemed to have turned to stones. He remembered them and knew them in a way—as the lad in the fairy tale recognized his friends in the pillar-stones outside the giant’s castle. But they left him dull and cold. He knew that in this new calm that had come upon him he was a poorer man than before, when he had lived in fear and pain: beneath every stab of remorse and every longing for peace there had been something that was much greater and stronger than his fear: he loved Him from whom he fled, and even to the end he had secretly hoped that the hour would come when he could fly no more. Sooner or later, he must have thought, he would be reconciled with God—without its being left to him to choose. But he had been forced to choose and choose again. And so long had he chosen himself that he had lost even his love of God. But therewithal the fire and strength seemed to have gone out of his love for all else he had held dear in this world.

  God, Jesus Christ, Mary—once he had only had to think upon these words for his heart to glow with fervour within him. Now it mattered nothing to him whether he said his prayers in church or at home, morning and evening, if others were by and it was the time, or whether he omitted to pray when alone. But this new indifference was as much poorer than his old torment as a heap of ashes is poorer than a blazing fire.

  But Ingunn—were her memory never so faded and burned out, he would not cast it out to make room for new possessions. And as his life was now, he would neither own nor bring into it this happiness he was offered.

  Olav Half-priest had once told him of Hvitserk’s howe, the largest of the mounds here by the brow of the wood. It was before the Christian faith had come to the land; the race of Inggjald then possessed Hestviken, that stock of which his grandfather’s grandmother had come, and the name of the chief was Aale Hvitserk. He had been a famous viking, but now he was in extreme old age. Then his enemies burned his homestead of Hestviken—this was the first of the three burnings that had laid the manor in ashes. Aale’s sons cleared the site and had timber brought to build the houses anew, but Aale let his house-carls cast up a barrow, and on the day they set about dragging off the charred beams of Aale’s hall, the old man went into the mound and bade his thralls close up the earthen house with stones.

  Olav Audunsson remembered that he had shaken his head when his old namesake told him this tale—but at the same time he had thought him a doughty fellow, that same old heathen.

  Now he lay in the darkness smiling a little at this thought. He had taken good heed not to speak of it to any priest, but he offered a Yule cup to the spirit of the mound and carried out a bowl of ale on the eve of other great festivals. Even Arnvid did so at his own home—’twas no great sin, said he, if one did but go quietly about it, without asking anything of the dead in return. Now maybe he ought to be more mindful of his offerings—like enough he would meet with his heathen ancestor in the end.

  2

  IT had chanced, while Olav was in England, that Eirik had received full assurance that he was true-born.

  He had had to go up to Rynjul one day with a packload—cups and vessels that Olav had borrowed for his wife’s funeral feast. Now they had a very snappish little bitch tied up in the yard there, and that day she had slipped out of her thong, dashed up, and bitten Eirik in the leg as he came in between the houses. Eirik kicked the bitch so that she rolled over on the grass howling. Torgrim rushed out of a door in a great rage:

  “—afraid of a little dog like that—and kicking at a bitch—none but a child of bawdry such as you would do the like!”

  Eirik had come into the hall, and Una was counting over her vessels; then the lad burst out:

  “Una—those words that Torgrim said—are they true?”

  “Are what true?” she repeated from among her wooden cups.

  “Child of bawdry—that is the same as whoreson, is it not, Una?” whispered Eirik dolefully.

  “Yes—why?” She looked up and saw the lad standing there, pale as bast, his narrow young face stricken with despair. “Holy Mary—what ails you, Eirik?”

  “Am I that? Answer me truly, Una mine!”

  Una Arnesdatter stood speechless.

  “Ay, I guessed it long ago,” whispered Eirik.

  “What did you guess? Are you not ashamed—to say such a thing of your father—and your mother, who lies under the sod? Help us, what have you taken into your head now again!”

  “You must have heard him say it, Torgrim—Father himself called me bastard once.”

  “You may be sure,” said Una more gently, “neither of the two would have called you such bad names if you had been so indeed. Surely you have wit enough to see that ’twas only the word of an angry man.”

  “Then was Mother married to Father?” asked Eirik.

  “You have no need to ask that. Olav kept the poor woman in good and honourable state so long as she lived. You can have seen naught else.”

  “He took the keys from her and gave them to his leman,” muttered Eirik. “That was a year and more ere Mother lost her health.”

  “Say no more of that, boy.” Una turned red with indignation. “You do not understand it. I will speak no ill of your mother, poor soul that she was—’twas not her fault that her kinsmen dealt falsely by Olav, still less that she was as she was, sickly and feebleminded. None could expect a man to be well pleased with such a marriage as fell to the lot of our kinsman. Scarce had the Steinfinnssons got the rich heir into their power when they bound the little boy in bonds of betrothal to one of their own children; and then they cheated him of all he should have received with his bride; never has Olav had help or honour of that alliance, but he was forced to take the ailing woman, for they had trapped him into her bed ere he was fully grown.”

  Una talked thus for a good while and said what she thought of Olav’s married life. She was faithful to her own kin and fond of Olav as though he had been her brother; but though she had always been helpful and kind to his wife, she had had but a moderate liking for Ingunn, and in her heart she had called her a worm.

  Together with Eirik’s first sense of boundless relief on knowing that none could drive him away from Hestviken, there came a smouldering indignation against his father. He might have spared himself these years of anxious insecurity—but it was his father’s fault: so barefaced had he been in his evil life with that cursed jade Torhild that it was only natural Eirik should fear the worst. Wrong, wrong, wrong had his mother suffered under her own roof.

  Eirik spent that summer at Hestviken. Every corner of the old walls, every crack in the smooth-worn, reddish-grey rocks had a face that met his loving glances with a look of gentle kindness. The strip of seaweed under his own rocks looked different from seaweed elsewhere. No other wharves or boats smelt so good as theirs. When he took up the oars in his own boat or put out his nets, his whole body was filled with delight—he owned them! He caressed every animal he met that was theirs. Eirik took an ear of barley and laid it on his wrist over the pulse so that it crawled up under the sleeve—this old child’s game had become a sort of magic ceremony: it was his corn. He need no longer be afraid as he lived and moved among all these things—they would never vanish away out of his hands.

  Eirik’s memory of his mothe
r had quickly faded. In her last years, when she never left her bed, she had already passed out of the boy’s world; after her death he had soon ceased to think of her. Now that he was so indignant with his father, he felt an added resentment on his mother’s behalf; his affection for her awakened, he often longed for her. He had been so fond of her as long as she was well and he could be with her—and his father had treated her so harshly and cruelly.

  But it only needed a friendly word from Olav, and Eirik forgot all his bitterness. Afterwards he remembered it and was angry at his own weakness. But no sooner did the man show him the least indulgence, no sooner did Eirik see but a shadow of the pale, frozen smile on his father’s lips as he spoke to him, than the son became insensible to all but his abject adoration of his father.

  A short time after Olav’s return from England, Eirik heard the rumours that he was to marry Disa Erlandsdatter. Up at Rundmyr they gossiped freely about everything.

  Eirik’s temper rebelled again. He would not have a stepmother. He would not hear of joint heirs in Hestviken. No strangers should come, bringing new customs or anything new. All should be his and Cecilia’s, the manor and the wharf and the woods on the Bull and along the back of the Horse Crag, Kverndal and Saltviken. He knew every path there, he had his own places, outlooks, and hidden grassy hollows among the grey rocks toward the sea; his habit was to go there, simply to sit there alone rejoicing vaguely and obscurely in the possession of these hiding-places. The hunting in the forest, the sealing, the fishery, all this would one day be in his control. But the last and inmost thought, which always made him mad with passion—for he knew he had no power to hinder its coming to pass—was that one day another might come between him and his father. He even spun long fabulous dreams of the deed that would one day make him his father’s favourite.

  The seal-hunting wellnigh failed that year. And Olav lost a good new six-oared boat out in the skerries; the painter was cut one night, whether it was the work of an enemy or someone had stolen the boat. So Olav came home from sea in a gloomy temper, even for him.