Elsket | Page 7

saw Olaf shake his head, and heard her say bitterly, "It
is so hard to wait," and he said, gently, "Yes, it is, Elsket, but I will go
again," and then she came in weeping quietly, the old man following
with a tender look on his strong, weather-beaten face.
That day Elsket was taken ill. She had been trying to do a little work in
the field in the afternoon, when a sinking spell had come on. It looked
for a time as if the poor overdriven heart had knocked off work for
good and all. Strong remedies, however, left by Doctor John, set it
going again, and we got her to bed. She was still desperately feeble,
and Olaf sat up. I could not leave him, so we were sitting watching, he
one side the open platform fireplace in one corner, and I the other; he
smoking, anxious, silent, grim; I watching the expression on his gray

face. His eyes seemed set back deeper than ever under the shaggy gray
brows, and as the firelight fell on him he had the fierce, hopeless look
of a caged eagle. It was late in the night before he spoke, and then it
was half to himself and but half to me.
"I have fought it ten long years," he said, slowly.
Not willing to break the thread of his thought by speaking, I lit my pipe
afresh and just looked at him. He received it as an answer.
"She is the last of them," he said, accepting me as an auditor rather than
addressing me. "We go back to Olaf Traetelje, the blood of Harold
Haarfager (the Fairhaired) is in our veins, and here it ends. Dane and
Swede have known our power, Saxon and Celt have bowed
bare-headed to us, and with her it ends. In this stronghold many times
her fathers have found refuge from their foes and gained breathing-time
after battles by sea and land. From this nest, like eagles, they have
swooped down, carrying all before them, and here, at last, when
betrayed and hunted, they found refuge. Here no foreign king could
rule over them; here they learnt the lesson that Christ is the only king,
and that all men are his brothers. Here they lived and worshipped him.
If their dominions were stolen from them they found here a truer wealth,
content; if they had not power, they had what was better, independence.
For centuries they held this last remnant of the dominion which Harold
Haarfager had conquered by land, and Eric of the Bloody Axe had won
by sea, sending out their sons and daughters to people the lands; but the
race dwindled as their lands had done before, and now with her dies the
last. How has it come? As ever, by betrayal!"
The old man turned fiercely, his breast heaving, his eyes burning.
"Was she who came of a race at whose feet jarls have crawled and
kings have knelt not good enough?" I was hearing the story and did not
interrupt him--"Not good enough for him!" he continued in his low,
fierce monotone. "I did not want him. What if he was a Saxon? His
fathers were our boatmen. Rather Cnut a thousand times. Then the race
would not have died. Then she would not be--not be so."

The reference to her recalled him to himself, and he suddenly relapsed
into silence.
"At least, Cnut paid the score," he began once more, in a low intense
undertone. "In his arms he bore him down from the Devil's Seat, a
thousand feet sheer on the hard ice, where his cursed body lies crushed
forever, a witness of his falsehood."
I did not interrupt, and he rewarded my patience, giving a more
connected account, for the first time addressing me directly.
"Her mother died when she was a child," he said, softly. His gentle
voice contrasted strangely with the fierce undertone in which he had
been speaking. "I was mother as well as father to her. She was as good
as she was beautiful, and each day she grew more and more so. She
was a second Igenborg. Knowing that she needed other companionship
than an old man, I sought and brought her Cnut (he spoke of him as if I
must know all about him). Cnut was the son of my only kinsman, the
last of his line as well, and he was tall and straight and strong. I loved
him and he was my son, and as he grew I saw that he loved her, and I
was not sorry, for he was goodly to look on, straight and tall as one of
old, and he was good also. And she was satisfied with him, and from a
child ordered him to do