The Waif Woman | Page 9

the hill, and was
concerned. "Well, he was a good husband to me," she thought, "and I
was a good wife to him. But that is an old song now." So she turned
again to handling the stuffs and jewels. At last she got to bed in the
smooth sheets, and lay, and fancied how she would look, and admired
herself, and saw others admire her, and told herself stories, till her heart
grew warm and she chuckled to herself between the sheets. So she
shook awhile with laughter; and then the mirth abated but not the
shaking; and a grue took hold upon her flesh, and the cold of the grave
upon her belly, and the terror of death upon her soul. With that a voice
was in her ear: "It was so Thorgunna sickened." Thrice in the night the
chill and the terror took her, and thrice it passed away; and when she
rose on the morrow, death had breathed upon her countenance.
She saw the house folk and her children gaze upon her; well she knew
why! She knew her day was come, and the last of her days, and her last
hour was at her back; and it was so in her soul that she scarce minded.
All was lost, all was past mending, she would carry on until she fell. So
she went as usual, and hurried the feast for the young men, and railed
upon her house folk, but her feet stumbled, and her voice was strange in
her own ears, and the eyes of the folk fled before her. At times, too, the
chill took her and the fear along with it; and she must sit down, and the
teeth beat together in her head, and the stool tottered on the floor. At
these times, she thought she was passing, and the voice of Thorgunna
sounded in her ear: "The things are for no use but to be shown," it said.

"Aud, Aud, have you shown them once? No, not once!"
And at the sting of the thought her courage and strength would revive,
and she would rise again and move about her business.
Now the hour drew near, and Aud went to her bed-place, and did on the
bravest of her finery, and came forth to greet her guests. Was never
woman in Iceland robed as she was. The words of greeting were yet
between her lips, when the shuddering fell upon her strong as labour,
and a horror as deep as hell. Her face was changed amidst her finery,
and the faces of her guests were changed as they beheld her: fear
puckered their brows, fear drew back their feet; and she took her doom
from the looks of them, and fled to her bed-place. There she flung
herself on the wife's coverlet, and turned her face against the wall.
That was the end of all the words of Aud; and in the small hours on the
clock her spirit wended. Asdis had come to and fro, seeing if she might
help, where was no help possible of man or woman. It was light in the
bed-place when the maid returned, for a taper stood upon a chest. There
lay Aud in her fine clothes, and there by her side on the bed the big
dead wife Thorgunna squatted on her hams. No sound was heard, but it
seemed by the movement of her mouth as if Thorgunna sang, and she
waved her arms as if to singing.
"God be good to us!" cried Asdis, "she is dead."
"Dead," said the dead wife.
"Is the weird passed?" cried Asdis.
"When the sin is done the weird is dreed," said Thorgunna, and with
that she was not.
But the next day Eyolf and Asdis caused build a fire on the shore
betwixt tide-marks. There they burned the bed-clothes, and the clothes,
and the jewels, and the very boards of the waif woman's chests; and
when the tide returned it washed away their ashes. So the weird of
Thorgunna was lifted from the house on Frodis Water.

PRINTED BY BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED GUILDFORD,
ENGLAND.

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