Asathor's Vengeance

________________________________________________
Title:     Asathor's Vengeance
Author: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen [More Titles by Boyesen]

I.

IT was right up under the steel mountain wall where the farm of Kvaerk lay. How any man of common sense could have hit upon the idea of building a house there, where none but the goat and the hawk had easy access, had been, and I am afraid would ever be, a matter of wonder to the parish people. However, it was not Lage Kvaerk who had built the house, so he could hardly be made responsible for its situation. Moreover, to move from a place where one's life has once struck deep root, even if it be in the chinks and crevices of stones and rocks, is about the same as to destroy it. An old tree grows but poorly in a new soil. So Lage Kvaerk thought, and so he said, too, whenever his wife Elsie spoke of her sunny home at the river.

Gloomy as Lage usually was, he had his brighter moments, and people noticed that these were most likely to occur when Aasa, his daughter, was near. Lage was probably also the only being whom Aasa's presence could cheer; on other people it seemed to have the very opposite effect; for Aasa was--according to the testimony of those who knew her--the most peculiar creature that ever was born. But perhaps no one did know her; if her father was right, no one really did--at least no one but himself.

Aasa was all to her father; she was his past and she was his future, his hope and his life; and withal it must be admitted that those who judged her without knowing her had at least in one respect as just an opinion of her as he; for there was no denying that she was strange, very strange. She spoke when she ought to be silent, and was silent when it was proper to speak; wept when she ought to laugh, and laughed when it was proper to weep; but her laughter as well as her tears, her speech like her silence, seemed to have their source from within her own soul, to be occasioned, as it were, by something which no one else could see or hear. It made little difference where she was; if the tears came, she yielded to them as if they were something she had long desired in vain. Few could weep like her, and "weep like Aasa Kvaerk," was soon also added to the stock of parish proverbs. And then her laugh! Tears may be inopportune enough, when they come out of time, but laughter is far worse; and when poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter in church, and that while the minister was pronouncing the benediction, it was only with the greatest difficulty that her father could prevent the indignant congregation from seizing her and carrying her before the sheriff for violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor and homely, then of course nothing could have saved her; but she happened to be both rich and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much is pardoned. Aasa's beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness so common in her sex, but something of the beauty of the falcon, when it swoops down upon the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely crags; something of the mystic depth of the dark tarn, when with bodeful trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August, her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the North, and the longer you looked at them the deeper they grew, just like the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as deep as the heavens above, that is, whose depth only faith and fancy can fathom. But however long you looked at Aasa, you could never be quite sure that she looked at you; she seemed but to half notice whatever went on around her; the look of her eye was always more than half inward, and when it shone the brightest, it might well happen that she could not have told you how many years she had lived, or the name her father gave her in baptism.

Now Aasa was eighteen years old, and could knit, weave, and spin, and it was full time that wooers should come. "But that is the consequence of living in such an out-of-the-way place," said her mother; "who will risk his limbs to climb that neck-breaking rock? and the round-about way over the forest is rather too long for a wooer." Besides handling the loom and the spinning-wheel, Aasa had also learned to churn and make cheese to perfection, and whenever Elsie grieved at her strange behavior she always in the end consoled herself with the reflection that after all Aasa would make the man who should get her an excellent housewife.

The farm of Kvaerk was indeed most singularly situated. About a hundred feet from the house the rough wall of the mountain rose steep and threatening; and the most remarkable part of it was that the rock itself caved inward and formed a lofty arch overhead, which looked like a huge door leading into the mountain. Some short distance below, the slope of the fields ended in an abrupt precipice; far underneath lay the other farm-houses of the valley, scattered like small red or gray dots, and the river wound onward like a white silver stripe in the shelter of the dusky forest. There was a path down along the rock, which a goat or a brisk lad might be induced to climb, if the prize of the experiment were great enough to justify the hazard. The common road to Kvaerk made a large circuit around the forest, and reached the valley far up at its northern end.

It was difficult to get anything to grow at Kvaerk. In the spring all the valley lay bare and green, before the snow had begun to think of melting up there; and the night-frost would be sure to make a visit there, while the fields along the river lay silently drinking the summer dew. On such occasions the whole family at Kvaerk would have to stay up during all the night and walk back and forth on either side of the wheat-fields, carrying a long rope between them and dragging it slowly over the heads of the rye, to prevent the frost from settling; for as long as the ears could be kept in motion, they could not freeze. But what did thrive at Kvaerk in spite of both snow and night-frost was legends, and they throve perhaps the better for the very sterility of its material soil. Aasa of course had heard them all and knew them by heart; they had been her friends from childhood, and her only companions. All the servants, however, also knew them and many others besides, and if they were asked how the mansion of Kvaerk happened to be built like an eagle's nest on the brink of a precipice, they would tell you the following:

Saint Olaf, Norway's holy king, in the time of his youth had sailed as a Viking over the wide ocean, and in foreign lands had learned the doctrine of Christ the White. When he came home to claim the throne of his hereditary kingdom, he brought with him tapers and black priests, and commanded the people to overthrow the altars of Odin and Thor and to believe alone in Christ the White. If any still dared to slaughter a horse to the old gods, he cut off their ears, burned their farms, and drove them houseless from the smoking ruins. Here in the valley old Thor, or, as they called him, Asathor, had always helped us to vengeance and victory, and gentle Frey for many years had given us fair and fertile summers. Therefore the peasants paid little heed to King Olaf's god, and continued to bring their offerings to Odin and Asathor. This reached the king's ear, and he summoned his bishop and five black priests, and set out to visit our valley. Having arrived here, he called the peasants together, stood up on the Ting-stone, told them of the great things that the White Christ had done, and bade them choose between him and the old gods. Some were scared, and received baptism from the king's priests; others bit their lips and were silent; others again stood forth and told Saint Olaf that Odin and Asathor had always served them well, and that they were not going to give them up for Christ the White, whom they had never seen and of whom they knew nothing. The next night the red cock crew [1] over ten farms in the valley, and it happened to be theirs who had spoken against King Olaf's god. Then the peasants flocked to the Ting-stone and received the baptism of Christ the White. Some few, who had mighty kinsmen in the North, fled and spread the evil tidings. Only one neither fled nor was baptized, and that one was Lage Ulfson Kvaerk, the ancestor of the present Lage. He slew his best steed before Asathor's altar, and promised to give him whatever he should ask, even to his own life, if he would save him from the vengeance of the king. Asathor heard his prayer. As the sun set, a storm sprung up with thick darkness and gloom, the earth shook, Asathor drove his chariot over the heavens with deafening thunder and swung his hammer right and left, and the crackling lightning flew through the air like a hail-storm of fire. Then the peasants trembled, for they knew that Asathor was wroth. Only the king sat calm and fearless with his bishop and priests, quaffing the nut-brown mead. The tempest raged until morn. When the sun rose, Saint Olaf called his hundred swains, sprang into the saddle and rode down toward the river. Few men who saw the angry fire in his eye, and the frown on his royal brow, doubted whither he was bound. But having reached the ford, a wondrous sight met his eye. Where on the day before the highway had wound itself up the slope toward Lage Kvaerk's mansion, lay now a wild ravine; the rock was shattered into a thousand pieces, and a deep gorge, as if made by a single stroke of a huge hammer, separated the king from his enemy. Then Saint Olaf made the sign of the cross, and mumbled the name of Christ the White; but his hundred swains made the sign of the hammer under their cloaks, and thought, Still is Asathor alive.

That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a black ram, and thanked Asathor for his deliverance; and the Saga tells that while he was sprinkling the blood on the altar, the thundering god himself appeared to him, and wilder he looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said he, were every-day fare; they could redeem no promise. Brynhild, his daughter, was the reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and besought him to ask for something else. He would gladly give him one of his sons; for he had three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor was immovable; but so long Lage continued to beg, that at last he consented to come back in a year, when Lage perchance would be better reconciled to the thought of Brynhild's loss.

In the mean time King Olaf built a church to Christ the White on the headland at the river, where it stands until this day. Every evening, when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains, the parishioners thought they heard heavy, half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk; and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced chimes called them to high-mass, a suppressed moan would mingle with the sound of the bells, and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson was not the man to be afraid; yet the church-bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks; for he also heard the moan from the mountain.

The year went, and Asathor returned. If he had not told his name, however, Lage would not have recognized him. That a year could work so great a change in a god, he would hardly have believed, if his own eyes had not testified to it. Asathor's cheeks were pale and bloodless, the lustre of his eye more than half quenched, and his gray hair hung in disorder down over his forehead.

"Methinks thou lookest rather poorly to-day," said Lage.

"It is only those cursed church-bells," answered the god; "they leave me no rest day or night."

"Aha," thought Lage, "if the king's bells are mightier than thou, then there is still hope of safety for my daughter."

"Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?" asked Asathor.

"I know not where she is," answered the father; and straightway he turned his eyes toward the golden cross that shone over the valley from Saint Olaf's steeple, and he called aloud on the White Christ's name. Then the god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground, writhed and foamed and vanished into the mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a hoarse voice crying from within, "I shall return, Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt least expect me!"

Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way through the forest; and when that was done, he called all his household together, and told them of the power of Christ the White. Not long after he took his sons and his daughter, and hastened with them southward, until he found King Olaf. And, so the Saga relates, they all fell down on their knees before him, prayed for his forgiveness, and received baptism from the king's own bishop.

So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk.

II.

Aasa Kvaerk loved her father well, but especially in the winter. Then, while she sat turning her spinning-wheel in the light of the crackling logs, his silent presence always had a wonderfully soothing and calming effect upon her. She never laughed then, and seldom wept; when she felt his eyes resting on her, her thoughts, her senses, and her whole being seemed by degrees to be lured from their hiding-place and concentrate on him; and from him they ventured again, first timidly, then more boldly, to grasp the objects around him. At such times Aasa could talk and jest almost like other girls, and her mother, to whom "other girls" represented the ideal of womanly perfection, would send significant glances, full of hope and encouragement, over to Lage, and he would quietly nod in return, as if to say that he entirely agreed with her. Then Elsie had bright visions of wooers and thrifty housewives, and even Lage dreamed of seeing the ancient honor of the family re-established. All depended on Aasa. She was the last of the mighty race. But when summer came, the bright visions fled; and the spring winds, which to others bring life and joy, to Kvaerk brought nothing but sorrow. No sooner had the mountain brooks begun to swell, than Aasa began to laugh and to weep; and when the first birches budded up in the glens, she could no longer be kept at home. Prayers and threats were equally useless. From early dawn until evening she would roam about in forests and fields, and when late at night she stole into the room and slipped away into some corner, Lage drew a deep sigh and thought of the old tradition.

Aasa was nineteen years old before she had a single wooer. But when she was least expecting it, the wooer came to her.

It was late one summer night; the young maiden was sitting on the brink of the ravine, pondering on the old legend and peering down into the deep below. It was not the first time she had found her way hither, where but seldom a human foot had dared to tread. To her every alder and bramble-bush, that clothed the naked wall of the rock, were as familiar as were the knots and veins in the ceiling of the chamber where from her childhood she had slept; and as she sat there on the brink of the precipice, the late summer sun threw its red lustre upon her and upon the fogs that came drifting up from the deep. With her eyes she followed the drifting masses of fog, and wondered, as they rose higher and higher, when they would reach her; in her fancy she saw herself dancing over the wide expanse of heaven, clad in the sun-gilded evening fogs; and Saint Olaf, the great and holy king, came riding to meet her, mounted on a flaming steed made of the glory of a thousand sunsets; then Saint Olaf took her hand and lifted her up, and she sat with him on the flaming steed: but the fog lingered in the deep below, and as it rose it spread like a thin, half-invisible gauze over the forests and the fields, and at last vanished into the infinite space. But hark! a huge stone rolls down over the mountain-side, then another, and another; the noise grows, the birches down there in the gorge tremble and shake. Aasa leaned out over the brink of the ravine, and, as far as she could distinguish anything from her dizzying height, thought she saw something gray creeping slowly up the neck-breaking mountain path; she watched it for a while, but as it seemed to advance no farther she again took refuge in her reveries. An hour might have passed, or perhaps more, when suddenly she heard a noise only a few feet distant, and, again stooping out over the brink, saw the figure of a man struggling desperately to climb the last great ledge of the rock. With both his hands he clung to a little birch-tree which stretched its slender arms down over the black wall, but with every moment that passed seemed less likely to accomplish the feat. The girl for a while stood watching him with unfeigned curiosity, then, suddenly reminding herself that the situation to him must be a dangerous one, seized hold of a tree that grew near the brink, and leaned out over the rock to give him her assistance. He eagerly grasped her extended hand, and with a vigorous pull she flung him up on the grassy level, where he remained lying for a minute or two, apparently utterly unable to account for his sudden ascent, and gazing around him with a half-frightened, half-bewildered look. Aasa, to whom his appearance was no less strange than his demeanor, unluckily hit upon the idea that perhaps her rather violent treatment had momentarily stunned him, and when, as answer to her sympathizing question if he was hurt, the stranger abruptly rose to his feet and towered up before her to the formidable height of six feet four or five, she could no longer master her mirth, but burst out into a most vehement fit of laughter. He stood calm and silent, and looked at her with a timid but strangely bitter smile. He was so very different from any man she had ever seen before; therefore she laughed, not necessarily because he amused her, but because his whole person was a surprise to her; and there he stood, tall and gaunt and timid, and said not a word, only gazed and gazed. His dress was not the national costume of the valley, neither was it like anything that Aasa had ever known. On his head he wore a cap that hung all on one side, and was decorated with a long, heavy silk tassel. A threadbare coat, which seemed to be made expressly not to fit him, hung loosely on his sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons, which were narrow where they ought to have been wide, and wide where it was their duty to be narrow, extended their service to a little more than the upper half of the limb, and, by a kind of compromise with the tops of the boots, managed to protect also the lower half. His features were delicate, and would have been called handsome had they belonged to a proportionately delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy vagueness which seemed to come and vanish, and to flit from one feature to another, suggesting the idea of remoteness, and a feeling of hopeless strangeness to the world and all its concerns.

"Do I inconvenience you, madam?" were the first words he uttered, as Aasa in her usual abrupt manner stayed her laughter, turned her back on him, and hastily started for the house.

"Inconvenience?" said she, surprised, and again slowly turned on her heel; "no, not that I know."

"Then tell me if there are people living here in the neighborhood, or if the light deceived me, which I saw from the other side of the river."

"Follow me," answered Aasa, and she naively reached him her hand; "my father's name is Lage Ulfson Kvaerk; he lives in the large house you see straight before you, there on the hill; and my mother lives there too."

And hand in hand they walked together, where a path had been made between two adjoining rye-fields; his serious smile seemed to grow milder and happier, the longer he lingered at her side, and her eye caught a ray of more human intelligence, as it rested on him.

"What do you do up here in the long winter?" asked he, after a pause.

"We sing," answered she, as it were at random, because the word came into her mind; "and what do you do, where you come from?"

"I gather song."

"Have you ever heard the forest sing?" asked she, curiously.

"That is why I came here."

And again they walked on in silence.

It was near midnight when they entered the large hall at Kvaerk. Aasa went before, still leading the young man by the hand. In the twilight which filled the house, the space between the black, smoky rafters opened a vague vista into the region of the fabulous, and every object in the room loomed forth from the dusk with exaggerated form and dimensions. The room appeared at first to be but the haunt of the spirits of the past; no human voice, no human footstep, was heard; and the stranger instinctively pressed the hand he held more tightly; for he was not sure but that he was standing on the boundary of dream-land, and some elfin maiden had reached him her hand to lure him into her mountain, where he should live with her forever. But the illusion was of brief duration; for Aasa's thoughts had taken a widely different course; it was but seldom she had found herself under the necessity of making a decision; and now it evidently devolved upon her to find the stranger a place of rest for the night; so instead of an elf-maid's kiss and a silver palace, he soon found himself huddled into a dark little alcove in the wall, where he was told to go to sleep, while Aasa wandered over to the empty cow-stables, and threw herself down in the hay by the side of two sleeping milkmaids.

III.

There was not a little astonishment manifested among the servant-maids at Kvaerk the next morning, when the huge, gaunt figure of a man was seen to launch forth from Aasa's alcove, and the strangest of all was, that Aasa herself appeared to be as much astonished as the rest. And there they stood, all gazing at the bewildered traveler, who indeed was no less startled than they, and as utterly unable to account for his own sudden apparition. After a long pause, he summoned all his courage, fixed his eyes intently on the group of the girls, and with a few rapid steps advanced toward Aasa, whom he seized by the hand and asked, "Are you not my maiden of yester-eve?"

She met his gaze firmly, and laid her hand on her forehead as if to clear her thoughts; as the memory of the night flashed through her mind, a bright smile lit up her features, and she answered, "You are the man who gathers song. Forgive me, I was not sure but it was all a dream; for I dream so much."

Then one of the maids ran out to call Lage Ulfson, who had gone to the stables to harness the horses; and he came and greeted the unknown man, and thanked him for last meeting, as is the wont of Norse peasants, although they had never seen each other until that morning. But when the stranger had eaten two meals in Lage's house, Lage asked him his name and his father's occupation; for old Norwegian hospitality forbids the host to learn the guest's name before he has slept and eaten under his roof. It was that same afternoon, when they sat together smoking their pipes under the huge old pine in the yard,--it was then Lage inquired about the young man's name and family; and the young man said that his name was Trond Vigfusson, that he had graduated at the University of Christiania, and that his father had been a lieutenant in the army; but both he and Trond's mother had died, when Trond was only a few years old. Lage then told his guest Vigfusson something about his family, but of the legend of Asathor and Saint Olaf he spoke not a word. And while they were sitting there talking together, Aasa came and sat down at Vigfusson's feet; her long golden hair flowed in a waving stream down over her back and shoulders, there was a fresh, healthful glow on her cheeks, and her blue, fathomless eyes had a strangely joyous, almost triumphant expression. The father's gaze dwelt fondly upon her, and the collegian was but conscious of one thought: that she was wondrously beautiful. And still so great was his natural timidity and awkwardness in the presence of women, that it was only with the greatest difficulty he could master his first impulse to find some excuse for leaving her. She, however, was aware of no such restraint.

"You said you came to gather song," she said; "where do you find it? for I too should like to find some new melody for my old thoughts; I have searched so long."

"I find my songs on the lips of the people," answered he, "and I write them down as the maidens or the old men sing them."

She did not seem quite to comprehend that. "Do you hear maidens sing them?" asked she, astonished. "Do you mean the troll-virgins and the elf-maidens?"

"By troll-virgins and elf-maidens, or what the legends call so, I understand the hidden and still audible voices of nature, of the dark pine forests, the legend-haunted glades, and the silent tarns; and this was what I referred to when I answered your question if I had ever heard the forest sing."

"Oh, oh!" cried she, delighted, and clapped her hands like a child; but in another moment she as suddenly grew serious again, and sat steadfastly gazing into his eye, as if she were trying to look into his very soul and there to find something kindred to her own lonely heart. A minute ago her presence had embarrassed him; now, strange to say, he met her eye, and smiled happily as he met it.

"Do you mean to say that you make your living by writing songs?" asked Lage.

"The trouble is," answered Vigfusson, "that I make no living at all; but I have invested a large capital, which is to yield its interest in the future. There is a treasure of song hidden in every nook and corner of our mountains and forests, and in our nation's heart. I am one of the miners who have come to dig it out before time and oblivion shall have buried every trace of it, and there shall not be even the will-o'-the-wisp of a legend to hover over the spot, and keep alive the sad fact of our loss and our blamable negligence."

Here the young man paused; his eyes gleamed, his pale cheeks flushed, and there was a warmth and an enthusiasm in his words which alarmed Lage, while on Aasa it worked like the most potent charm of the ancient mystic runes; she hardly comprehended more than half of the speaker's meaning, but his fire and eloquence were on this account none the less powerful.

"If that is your object," remarked Lage, "I think you have hit upon the right place in coming here. You will be able to pick up many an odd bit of a story from the servants and others hereabouts, and you are welcome to stay here with us as long as you choose."

Lage could not but attribute to Vigfusson the merit of having kept Aasa at home a whole day, and that in the month of midsummer. And while he sat there listening to their conversation, while he contemplated the delight that beamed from his daughter's countenance and, as he thought, the really intelligent expression of her eyes, could he conceal from himself the paternal hopes that swelled his heart? She was all that was left him, the life or the death of his mighty race. And here was one who was likely to understand her, and to whom she seemed willing to yield all the affection of her warm but wayward heart. Thus ran Lage Ulfson's reflections; and at night he had a little consultation with Elsie, his wife, who, it is needless to add, was no less sanguine than he.

"And then Aasa will make an excellent housewife, you know," observed Elsie. "I will speak to the girl about it to-morrow."

"No, for Heaven's sake, Elsie!" exclaimed Lage, "don't you know your daughter better than that? Promise me, Elsie, that you will not say a single word; it would be a cruel thing, Elsie, to mention anything to her. She is not like other girls, you know."

"Very well, Lage, I shall not say a single word. Alas, you are right, she is not like other girls." And Elsie again sighed at her husband's sad ignorance of a woman's nature, and at the still sadder fact of her daughter's inferiority to the accepted standard of womanhood.

IV.

Trond Vigfusson must have made a rich harvest of legends at Kvaerk, at least judging by the time he stayed there; for days and weeks passed, and he had yet said nothing of going. Not that anybody wished him to go; no, on the contrary, the longer he stayed the more indispensable he seemed to all; and Lage Ulfson could hardly think without a shudder of the possibility of his ever having to leave them. For Aasa, his only child, was like another being in the presence of this stranger; all that weird, forest-like intensity, that wild, half supernatural tinge in her character which in a measure excluded her from the blissful feeling of fellowship with other men, and made her the strange, lonely creature she was,--all this seemed to vanish as dew in the morning sun when Vigfusson's eyes rested upon her; and with every day that passed, her human and womanly nature gained a stronger hold upon her. She followed him like his shadow on all his wanderings, and when they sat down together by the wayside, she would sing, in a clear, soft voice, an ancient lay or ballad, and he would catch her words on his paper, and smile at the happy prospect of perpetuating what otherwise would have been lost. Aasa's love, whether conscious or not, was to him an everlasting source of strength, was a revelation of himself to himself, and a clearing and widening power which brought ever more and more of the universe within the scope of his vision. So they lived on from day to day and from week to week, and, as old Lage remarked, never had Kvaerk been the scene of so much happiness. Not a single time during Vigfusson's stay had Aasa fled to the forest, not a meal had she missed, and at the hours for family devotion she had taken her seat at the big table with the rest and apparently listened with as much attention and interest. Indeed, all this time Aasa seemed purposely to avoid the dark haunts of the woods, and, whenever she could, chose the open highway; not even Vigfusson's entreaties could induce her to tread the tempting paths that led into the forest's gloom.

"And why not, Aasa?" he would say; "summer is ten times summer there when the drowsy noonday spreads its trembling maze of shadows between those huge, venerable trunks. You can feel the summer creeping into your very heart and soul, there!"

"Oh, Vigfusson," she would answer, shaking her head mournfully, "for a hundred paths that lead in, there is only one that leads out again, and sometimes even that one is nowhere to be found."

He understood her not, but fearing to ask, he remained silent.

His words and his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which strove to take possession of her heart and to wrest her away from him forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness was staked on him.

One evening Vigfusson and old Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then again paused, and said, imploringly, "Try to get her home if you can, friend Vigfusson."

Vigfusson nodded, and Lage went; the song had ceased for a moment, now it began again:

"Ye twittering birdlings, in forest and glen
I have heard you so gladly before;
But a bold knight hath come to woo me,
I dare listen to you no more.
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.

"And the knight who hath come a-wooing to me,
He calls me his love and his own;
Why then should I stray through the darksome woods,
Or dream in the glades alone?
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest."

Her voice fell to a low unintelligible murmur; then it rose, and the last verses came, clear, soft, and low, drifting on the evening breeze:

"Yon beckoning world, that shimmering lay
O'er the woods where the old pines grow,
That gleamed through the moods of the summer day
When the breezes were murmuring low
(And it is so dark, so dark in the forest);

"Oh let me no more in the sunshine hear
Its quivering noonday call;
The bold knight's love is the sun of my heart--
Is my life, and my all in all.
But it is so dark, so dark in the forest."

The young man felt the blood rushing to his face--his heart beat violently. There was a keen sense of guilt in the blush on his cheek, a loud accusation in the throbbing pulse and the swelling heart-beat. Had he not stood there behind the maiden's back and cunningly peered into her soul's holy of holies? True, he loved Aasa; at least he thought he did, and the conviction was growing stronger with every day that passed. And now he had no doubt that he had gained her heart. It was not so much the words of the ballad which had betrayed the secret; he hardly knew what it was, but somehow the truth had flashed upon him, and he could no longer doubt.

Vigfusson sat down on the moss-grown rock and pondered. How long he sat there he did not know, but when he rose and looked around, Aasa was gone. Then remembering her father's request to bring her home, he hastened up the hill-side toward the mansion, and searched for her in all directions. It was near midnight when he returned to Kvaerk, where Aasa sat in her high gable window, still humming the weird melody of the old ballad.

By what reasoning Vigfusson arrived at his final conclusion is difficult to tell. If he had acted according to his first and perhaps most generous impulse, the matter would soon have been decided; but he was all the time possessed of a vague fear of acting dishonorably, and it was probably this very fear which made him do what, to the minds of those whose friendship and hospitality he had accepted, had something of the appearance he wished so carefully to avoid. Aasa was rich; he had nothing; it was a reason for delay, but hardly a conclusive one. They did not know him; he must go out in the world and prove himself worthy of her. He would come back when he should have compelled the world to respect him; for as yet he had done nothing. In fact, his arguments were good and honorable enough, and there would have been no fault to find with him, had the object of his love been as capable of reasoning as he was himself. But Aasa, poor thing, could do nothing by halves; a nature like hers brooks no delay; to her love was life or it was death.

The next morning he appeared at breakfast with his knapsack on his back, and otherwise equipped for his journey. It was of no use that Elsie cried and begged him to stay, that Lage joined his prayers to hers, and that Aasa stood staring at him with a bewildered gaze. Vigfusson shook hands with them all, thanked them for their kindness to him, and promised to return; he held Aasa's hand long in his, but when he released it, it dropped helplessly at her side.

V.

Far up in the glen, about a mile from Kvaerk, ran a little brook; that is, it was little in summer and winter, but in the spring, while the snow was melting up in the mountains, it overflowed the nearest land and turned the whole glen into a broad and shallow river. It was easy to cross, however; a light foot might jump from stone to stone, and be over in a minute. Not the hind herself could be lighter on her foot than Aasa was; and even in the spring-flood it was her wont to cross and recross the brook, and to sit dreaming on a large stone against which the water broke incessantly, rushing in white torrents over its edges.

Here she sat one fair summer day--the day after Vigfusson's departure. It was noon, and the sun stood high over the forest. The water murmured and murmured, babbled and whispered, until at length there came a sudden unceasing tone into its murmur, then another, and it sounded like a faint whispering song of small airy beings. And as she tried to listen, to fix the air in her mind, it all ceased again, and she heard but the monotonous murmuring of the brook. Everything seemed so empty and worthless, as if that faint melody had been the world of the moment. But there it was again; it sung and sung, and the birch overhead took up the melody and rustled it with its leaves, and the grasshopper over in the grass caught it and whirred it with her wings. The water, the trees, the air, were full of it. What a strange melody!

Aasa well knew that every brook and river has its Neck, besides hosts of little water-sprites. She had heard also that in the moonlight at midsummer, one might chance to see them rocking in bright little shells, playing among the pebbles, or dancing on the large leaves of the water-lily. And that they could sing also, she doubted not; it was their voices she heard through the murmuring of the brook. Aasa eagerly bent forward and gazed down into the water: the faint song grew louder, paused suddenly, and sprang into life again; and its sound was so sweet, so wonderfully alluring! Down there in the water, where a stubborn pebble kept chafing a precipitous little side current, clear tiny pearl-drops would leap up from the stream, and float half-wonderingly downward from rapid to rapid, until they lost themselves in the whirl of some stronger current. Thus sat Aasa and gazed and gazed, and in one moment she seemed to see what in the next moment she saw not. Then a sudden great hush stole through the forest, and in the hush she could hear the silence calling her name. It was so long since she had been in the forest, it seemed ages and ages ago. She hardly knew herself; the light seemed to be shining into her eyes as with a will and purpose, perhaps to obliterate something, some old dream or memory, or to impart some new power--the power of seeing the unseen. And this very thought, this fear of some possible loss, brought the fading memory back, and she pressed her hands against her throbbing temples as if to bind and chain it there forever; and it was he to whom her thought returned. She heard his voice, saw him beckoning to her to follow him, and she rose to obey, but her limbs were as petrified, and the stone on which she was sitting held her with the power of a hundred strong arms. The sunshine smote upon her eyelids, and his name was blotted out from her life; there was nothing but emptiness all around her. Gradually the forest drew nearer and nearer, the water bubbled and rippled, and the huge, bare-stemmed pines stretched their long gnarled arms toward her. The birches waved their heads with a wistful nod, and the profile of the rock grew into a face with a long, hooked nose, and a mouth half open as if to speak. And the word that trembled on his lips was, "Come." She felt no fear nor reluctance, but rose to obey. Then and not until then she saw an old man standing at her side; his face was the face of the rock, his white beard flowed to his girdle, and his mouth was half open, but no word came from his lips. There was something in the wistful look of his eye which she knew so well, which she had seen so often, although she could not tell when or where. The old man extended his hand; Aasa took it, and fearlessly or rather spontaneously followed. They approached the steep, rocky wall; as they drew near, a wild, fierce laugh rang through the forest. The features of the old man were twisted as it were into a grin; so also were the features of the rock; but the laugh blew like a mighty blast through the forest.

Aasa clung to the old man's hand and followed him--she knew not whither.

At home in the large sitting-room at Kvaerk sat Lage, brooding over the wreck of his hopes and his happiness. Aasa had gone to the woods again the very first day after Vigfusson's departure. What would be the end of all this? It was already late in the evening, and she had not returned. The father cast anxious glances toward the door, every time he heard the latch moving. At last, when it was near midnight, he roused all his men from their sleep, and commanded them to follow him. Soon the dusky forests resounded far and near with the blast of horns, the report of guns, and the calling and shouting of men. The affrighted stag crossed and recrossed the path of the hunters, but not a rifle was leveled at its head. Toward morning--it was before the sun had yet risen--Lage, weary and stunned, stood leaning up against a huge fir. Then suddenly a fierce, wild laugh rang through the forest. Lage shuddered, raised his hand slowly and pressed it hard against his forehead, vainly struggling to clear his thoughts. The men clung fearfully together; a few of the more courageous ones drew their knives and made the sign of the cross with them in the air. Again the same mad laugh shook the air, and swept over the crowns of the pine-trees. Then Lage lifted his eyes toward heaven and wrung his hands: for the awful truth stood before him. He remained a long while leaning against that old fir as in a dead stupor; and no one dared to arouse him. A suppressed murmur reached the men's ears. "But deliver us from evil" were the last words they heard.

When Lage and his servants came home to Kvaerk with the mournful tidings of Aasa's disappearance, no one knew what to do or say. There could be no doubt that Aasa was "mountain-taken," as they call it; for there were Trolds and dwarfs in all the rocks and forests round about, and they would hardly let slip the chance of alluring so fair a maiden as Aasa was into their castles in the mountains. Elsie, her mother, knew a good deal about the Trolds, their tricks, and their way of living, and when she had wept her fill, she fell to thinking of the possibility of regaining her daughter from their power. If Aasa had not yet tasted of food or drink in the mountain, she was still out of danger; and if the pastor would allow the church-bell to be brought up into the forest and rung near the rock where the laugh had been heard, the Trolds could be compelled to give her back. No sooner had this been suggested to Lage, than the command was given to muster the whole force of men and horses, and before evening on the same day the sturdy swains of Kvaerk were seen climbing the tower of the venerable church, whence soon the huge old bell descended, to the astonishment of the throng of curious women and children who had flocked together to see the extraordinary sight. It was laid upon four large wagons, which had been joined together with ropes and planks, and drawn away by twelve strong horses. Long after the strange caravan had vanished in the twilight, the children stood gazing up into the empty bell-tower.

It was near midnight, when Lage stood at the steep, rocky wall in the forest; the men were laboring to hoist the church-bell up to a staunch cross-beam between two mighty fir-trees, and in the weird light of their torches, the wild surroundings looked wilder and more fantastic. Anon, the muffled noise and bustle of the work being at an end, the laborers withdrew, and a strange, feverish silence seemed to brood over the forest. Lage took a step forward, and seized the bell-rope; the clear, conquering toll of the metal rung solemnly through the silence, and from the rocks, the earth, and the tree-tops, rose a fierce chorus of howls, groans, and screams. All night the ringing continued; the old trees swayed to and fro, creaked, and groaned, the roots loosened their holds in the fissures of the rock, and the bushy crowns bowed low under their unwonted burden.

It was well-nigh morn, but the dense fog still brooded over the woods, and it was dark as night. Lage was sitting on the ground, his head leaning on both his elbows; at his side lay the flickering torch, and the huge bell hung dumb overhead. In the dark he felt a hand touch his shoulder; had it happened only a few hours before, he would have shuddered; now the physical sensation hardly communicated itself to his mind, or, if it did, had no power to rouse him from his dead, hopeless apathy. Suddenly--could he trust his own ears?--the church-bell gave a slow, solemn, quivering stroke, and the fogs rolled in thick masses to the east and to the west, as if blown by the breath of the sound. Lage seized his torch, sprang to his feet, and saw--Vigfusson. He stretched his arm with the blazing torch closer to the young man's face, stared at him with large eyes, and his lip quivered; but he could not utter a word.

"Vigfusson?" faltered he at last.

"It is I;" and the second stroke followed, stronger and more solemn than the first. The same fierce, angry voices chorused forth from every nook of the rock and the woods. Then came the third--the noise grew; fourth--and it sounded like a hoarse, angry hiss; when the twelfth stroke fell, silence reigned again in the forest. Vigfusson dropped the bell-rope, and with a loud voice called Lage Kvaerk and his men. He lit a torch, held it aloft over his head, and peered through the dusky night. The men spread through the highlands to search for the lost maiden; Lage followed close in Vigfusson's footsteps. They had not walked far when they heard the babbling of the brook only a few feet away. Thither they directed their steps. On a large stone in the middle of the stream the youth thought he saw something white, like a large kerchief. Quick as thought he was at its side, bowed down with his torch, and--fell backward. It was Aasa, his beloved, cold and dead; but as the father stooped over his dead child the same mad laugh echoed wildly throughout the wide woods, but madder and louder than ever before, and from the rocky wall came a fierce, broken voice:

"I came at last."

When, after an hour of vain search, the men returned to the place whence they had started, they saw a faint light flickering between the birches not fifty feet away; they formed a firm column, and with fearful hearts drew nearer. There lay Lage Kvaerk, their master, still bending down over his child's pale features, and staring into her sunken eyes as if he could not believe that she were really dead. And at his side stood Vigfusson, pale and aghast, with the burning torch in his hand. The footsteps of the men awakened the father, but when he turned his face on them they shuddered and started back. Then Lage rose, lifted the maiden from the stone, and silently laid her in Vigfusson's arms; her rich yellow hair flowed down over his shoulder. The youth let his torch fall into the waters, and with a sharp, serpent-like hiss its flame was quenched. He crossed the brook; the men followed, and the dark pine-trees closed over the last descendant of Lage Ulfson's mighty race.

[Footnote 1: "The red cock crew" is the expression used in the old Norwegian Fagas for incendiary fire.]

[The end]
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen's short story: Asathor's Vengeance

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN