She fetched the butter-churn from the closet, then bore in some pans of milk, filled the churn and made ready to begin churning.
“Let me do it,” Kristin asked. “My back is younger.”
They worked without speaking; Kristin stood by the closet-door churning, while Aashild carded wool by the hearth. At last, when Kristin had emptied the churn and was kneading the butter, the girl asked of a sudden:
“Moster Aashild — are you never afraid of the day when you must stand before God’s judgment?”
Lady Aashild rose, and came and stood before Kristin in the light:
“It may be I shall find courage to ask Him that hath made me as I am, if He will have mercy on me in His own good time. For I have never begged for His mercy when I broke His commands. And never have I begged God or man to forgive me a farthing of the price I have paid here in this mountain hut.”
A little while after she said softly:
“Munan, my eldest son, was twenty years old. He was not such an one then, as I know he is now. They were not such ones then, my children —” Kristin answered low:
“But yet have you had Sir Björn by your side each day and each night in all these years.”
“Ay — that too have I had,” said Aashild.
In a little while after, Kristin was done with the butter-making. Lady Aashild said then that they must lie down and try to sleep a little.
Inside, in the dark bed, she laid her arm round Kristin’s shoulders, and drew the young head in to her breast. And it was not long before she heard by her even and gentle breathing that Kristin was fallen asleep.
4
THE FROST held on. In every byre in the parish the half-starved beasts bellowed dolefully with hunger and cold. Already the farmers were skimping and saving on their fodder, every straw they could.
There was little visiting round at Yule this year; folks stayed quiet in their own homes.
During Yuletide the cold grew greater — it was as though each day was colder than the last. Scarce any one could call to mind so hard a winter — there came no more snow, not even up in the mountains; but the snow that had fallen at Clementsmass froze hard as a stone. The sun shone from a clear sky, now the days began to grow lighter. At night the northern lights flickered and flamed above the range to the north — they flamed over half the heaven, but they brought no change of weather; now and again would come a cloudy day, and a little dry snow would sprinkle down — and then came clear weather again and biting cold. The Laagen muttered and gurgled sluggishly under its ice-bridges.
Kristin thought each morning that she could bear no more, that she could never hold out to the day’s end. For each day she felt was as a duel between her and her father. And could they be against each other so, when every living being in the parish, man and beast, was suffering under one common trial?… But still, when the evening came, she had held out one day more.
It was not that her father was unfriendly. They spoke no word of what was between them, but she felt, behind all that he did not say, his firm unbending will to hold fast to his denial.
And her heart ached within her for the lack of his friendship. The ache was so dreadful in its keenness, because she knew how much else her father had on his shoulders — and had things been as before, he would have talked with her of it all.… It was indeed so, that at Jörundgaard they were in better case than most other places; but here, too, they felt the pinch of the year each day and each hour. Other years it had been Lavrans’ wont in the winters to handle and break in his young colts; but this year he had sent them all south in the autumn and sold them. And his daughter missed the sound of his voice out in the courtyard, and the sight of him struggling with the slender, ragged two-year-olds in the game he loved so well. Storehouses and barns and bins at Jörundgaard were not bare yet — there was store left from the harvest of the year before — but many folk came to ask for help — to buy, or to beg for gifts — and none ever asked in vain.
Late one evening came a huge old skin-clad man on ski. Lavrans talked with him out in the courtyard, and Halvdan bore food across to the hearth-room for him. None on the place who had seen him knew who he was — he might well be one of those wild folk who lived far in among the fells; like enough Lavrans had come upon him there. But Lavrans said naught of the visitor, nor Halvdan either.
But one evening came a man whom Lavrans Björgulfsön had been at odds with for many years. Lavrans went to the storeroom with him. When he came back to the hall again he said:
“They come to me for help, every man of them. But here in my own house you are all against me. You, too, wife,” he said hotly.
The mother flamed up at Kristin:
“Hear you what your father says to me! No, I am not against you, Lavrans. I know — and I wot well you know it too, Kristin — what befell away south at Roaldstad late in the autumn, when he journeyed down the Dale with that other adulterer, his kinsman of Haugen — she took her own life, the unhappy woman he had lured away from all her kin.”
Kristin stood with a hard, frozen face:
“I see that ’tis all one — you blame him as much for the years he has striven to free himself from sin, as for the years he lived in it.”
“Jesus, Maria!” cried Ragnfrid, clasping her hands together: “What is come to you! Has even this not availed to change your heart?”
“No,” said Kristin. “I have not changed.” Then Lavrans looked up from the bench where he sat by Ulvhild:
“Neither have I changed, Kristin,” he said, in a low voice.
But Kristin felt within her that in a manner she was changed, in thoughts if not in heart. She had had tidings of how it had fared with them on that dreadful journey. As things fell out it had gone off more easily than they looked it should. Whether the cold had got into the hurt or whatever the cause might be, the knife-wound in Erlend’s breast had festered, and constrained him to lie sick some while in the hospice at Roaldstad, Sir Björn tending him. But that Erlend was wounded made it easier to win belief for their tale of how that other things had befallen.
When he was fit to journey on, he had taken the dead woman with him in a coffin all the way to Oslo. There, by Sira Jon’s help, he had won for her Christian burial in the churchyard of the old church of St. Nikolaus that had been pulled down. Then had he made confession to the Bishop of Oslo himself, and the Bishop had laid on him as penance to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Blood at Schwerin.* Now was he gone out of the land.
She could not make pilgrimage to any place on earth, and find absolution. For her there was naught but to sit here and wait and think, and strive to hold out in the struggle with her father and mother. A strange wintry-cold light fell on all her memories of meetings with Erlend. She thought of his vehemency — in love and in grief — and it was borne in on her that had she been able, like him, to take up all things of a sudden, and straightway rush forward with them headlong, afterwards maybe they might have seemed less fearful and heavy to bear. At times, too, she would think: maybe Erlend will give me up. It seemed to her she must always have had a little lurking fear that if things grew too hard for them he would fail her. But she would never give him up, unless he himself loosed her from all vows.
So the winter dragged on toward its end. And Kristin could not cheat herself any more; she had to see that the hardest trial of all lay before them — that Ulvhild had not long to live. And in the midst of her bitter sorrow for her sister she saw with horror that truly her own soul was wildered and eaten away with sin. For, with the dying child and the parents’ unspeakable sorrow before her eyes, she was still brooding on this one thing — if Ulvhild dies, how can I bear to look at my father and not throw myself at his feet and confess all and beseech him to forgive me — and command me …
They were come far on in the long fast. Folks had begun slaughtering the small stock they had hoped to save alive, for fear they should die of themselves. And the people themselves sickened and pined from living on fish, with naught besides but a
little wretched meal and flour. Sira Eirik gave leave to the whole parish to eat milk food if they would. But few of the folk could come by a drop of milk.
Ulvhild lay in bed. She lay alone in the sisters’ bed, and some one watched by her each night. It chanced sometimes that both Kristin and her father would be sitting by her. On such a night Lavrans said to his daughter:
“Mind you what Brother Edvin said that time about Ulvhild’s lot? Even then the thought came to me that maybe he meant this. But I thrust it from me then.”
Sometimes in these nights he would speak of this thing and that from the time when the children were small. Kristin sat there, white and desperate — she knew that behind the words her father was beseeching her.
One day Lavrans had gone with Kolbein to hunt out a bear’s winter lair in the wooded hills to the north. They came home with a she-bear on a sledge, and Lavrans brought with him a living bear-cub in the bosom of his coat. Ulvhild brightened a little when he showed it to her. But Ragnfrid said that was surely no time to rear up such a beast — what would he do with it at a time like this?
“I will rear it up and bind it before my daughters’ bower,” said Lavrans, laughing harshly.
But they could not get for the cub the rich milk it needed, and Lavrans had to kill it a few days after.
The sun had gained so much strength now that sometimes, at midday, the roofs would drip a little. The titmice clambered about, clinging on the sunny side of the timber walls, and pecked till the wood rang, digging for the flies sleeping in the cracks. Over the rolling fields around, the snow shone hard and bright as silver.
At last one evening clouds began to draw together over the moon. And the next morning the folk at Jörundgaard woke in the midst of a whirling world of snow that shut in their sight on every hand.
That day they knew that Ulvhild was dying.
All the house-folk were indoors, and Sira Eirik came over to them. Many candles were burning in the hall. Early in the evening Ulvhild passed away quietly and peacefully, in her mother’s arms.
Ragnfrid bore it better than any had thought possible. The father and mother sat together; both were weeping very quietly. All in the room were weeping. When Kristin went across to her father, he laid his arm round her shoulders. He felt how she shook and trembled, and he drew her close in to him. But to her it seemed that he must feel as if she were farther from him far than the dead child in the bed.
She understood not how it was that she still held out. She scarce remembered herself what it was she held out for; but, dulled and dumb with grief as she was, she held herself up and did not yield.…
… A few planks were torn up from the church floor in front of St. Thomas’s shrine, and a grave was hewn in the stone-hard ground beneath for Ulvhild Lavransdatter.
It was snowing thick and silently all through those days, while the child lay in the dead-straw; it was snowing still when she was borne to the grave; and it went on snowing, almost without cease, till a whole month was out.
To the folk of the Dale, waiting and waiting for the spring to deliver them, it seemed as though it would never come. The days grew long and light, and the steam-cloud from the melting snow lay on all the valley as long as the sun shone. But the cold still held the air, and there was no strength in the heat to overcome it. By night it froze hard — there was loud cracking from the ice, there were booming sounds from the distant fells; and the wolves howled and the fox barked down among the farms as at midwinter. Men stripped the bark from the trees for their cattle, but they dropped down dead in their stalls by scores. None could tell how all this was to end.
Kristin went out on such a day, when water was trickling in the ruts, and the snow on the fields around glistened like silver. The snow-wreaths had been eaten away hollow on the side toward the sun, so that the fine ice-trellis of the snow-crust edges broke with a silver tinkle when her foot touched them. But everywhere, where the smallest shadow fell, the sharp cold held the air and the snow was hard.
She went upward towards the church — she knew not herself what she went to do, but something drew her there. Her father was there — some of the free-holders, guild-brothers, were to meet in the cloister-way, she knew.
Half-way up the hill she met the troop of farmers, coming down. Sira Eirik was with them. The men were all on foot; they walked stoopingly in a dark, shaggy knot, and spoke no word together. They gave back her greeting sullenly as she went by them.
Kristin thought how far away the time was when every soul in the parish had been her friend. Like enough all men knew now that she was a bad daughter. Perhaps they knew yet more about her. It might well be that all believed now there had been some truth in the old talk about her and Arne and Bentein. It might be that she had fallen into the worst ill-fame. She held her head high and passed on toward the church.
The door stood ajar. It was cold in the church, yet was it as though a mild warmth streamed into her heart from the brown dusky hall with the high, upspringing pillars holding up the darkness under the roof-beams. There was no light on the altars, but a ray of sun shone in through the chink of the door and gleamed faintly back from the pictures and the holy vessels.
Far in before the altar of St. Thomas she saw her father kneeling with head bent forward on his folded hands, which held his cap crushed to his breast.
Shrinking back in fear and sadness, Kristin stole out and stood in the cloister-way, with her hands about two of its small pillars. Framed in the arch between them she saw Jörundgaard lying below, and behind her home the pale blue haze that filled the valley. Where the river lay stretched through the countryside its ice and water sent out white sparkles in the sunshine. But the alder thickets along its bed were yellow-brown with blossom, even the pine-wood up by the church was tinged with spring green, and there was a piping and twittering and whistling of little birds in the grove near by. Ay, there had been bird-song like this each evening after the sun was down.
And she felt that the longing she thought must have been racked out of her long since, the longing in her body and her blood, was stirring now again, faintly and feebly, as about to waken from a winter sleep.
Lavrans Björgulfsön came out and locked the church door behind him. He came and stood by his daughter, looking out through the arch next to her. She saw how the winter gone by had harrowed her father’s face. She understood not herself how she could touch now on what was between them, but the words seemed to rush out of themselves:
“Is it true what mother told me the other day — that you said to her: had it been Arne Gyrdsön you would have given me my will?”
“Ay,” said Lavrans, not looking at her.
“You said not so while yet Arne lived,” said Kristin.
“It never came in question. I saw well enough that the boy held you dear— but he said nothing — and he was young — and I marked not ever that you had such thoughts towards him. You could scarce think I would proffer my daughter to a man of no estate?” He smiled slightly. “But I loved the boy,” he said, in a low voice; “and had I seen you pining for love of him —”
They stood still, gazing. Kristin felt that her father was looking at her — she strove hard to be calm of face, but she felt herself grow deadly white. Then her father came towards her, put both his arms around her and pressed her strongly to him. He bent her head backwards, looked down into his daughter’s face, and then hid it again on his shoulder.
“Jesus Kristus, little Kristin, are you so unhappy — ? ”
“I think I shall die of it, father,” she said, her face pressed to him.
She burst into weeping. But she wept because she had felt in his caress and seen in his eyes that now he was so worn out with pain that he could not hold out against her any more. She had overcome him.
Far on in the night she was wakened in the dark by her father’s touch on her shoulder.
“Get up,” he said softly. “Do you hear — ?”
She heard the singing of the wind round the house-corners
— the deep, full note of the south wind, heavy with wetness. Streams were pouring from the roof; there was the whisper of rain falling on soft, melting snow.
Kristin flung her dress on her back and went after her father to the outer door. They stood together looking out into the twilight of the May night. Warm wind and rain smote against them; the heavens were a welter of tangled drifting rain-clouds, the woods roared, the wind whistled between the houses, and from far up in the fells they heard the dull boom of snow-masses falling.
Kristin felt for her father’s hand and held it. He had called her that he might show her this. So had it been between them before, that he would have done this; and so it was now again.
When they went in to go to bed again, Lavrans said:
“The stranger serving-man that came last week brought me letters from Sir Munan Baardsön. He is minded to come up the Dale to our parts next summer to see his mother; and he asked if he might meet me and have speech with me.”
“What will you answer him, my father?” she whispered.
“That can I not tell you now,” said Lavrans. “But I will speak with him; and then must I order this matter so as I may deem I can answer it to God, my daughter.”
Kristin crept in again beside Ramborg, and Lavrans went and lay down by the side of his sleeping wife. He lay thinking that if the flood came over-sudden and strong there were few places in the parish that lay so much in its path as Jörundgaard. Folk said there was a prophecy that some day the river would carry it away.
5
SPRING came at a single bound. Only a few days after the sudden thaw the whole parish lay dark brown under the flooding rain The waters rushed foaming down the hillsides, the river swelled up and lay in the valley-bottom, like a great leaden-grey lake, with lines of tree-tops floating on its waters and a treacherous bubbling furrow where the current ran. At Jörundgaard the water stood far up over the fields. But everywhere the mischief done was less than folks had feared.
The Bridal Wreath Page 26
