Chapter XXII: Cormac Comes Back

She hadn’t seen him since the day of her first bridal, the day when Berse brought her home into Sowerby. They had parted in unkindness, and it seems that they were to meet so; for her first feeling in her discontent was of hot rage against him as the maker of it. Her eyes were angry, and her cheek-bones were angry; she sat where she was by the fire with her needlework still in her lap, and watched him, waiting for him to speak.

Cormac, also, at first said nothing to her. He stood framed in the doorway, wryly smiling, frowning with one eyebrow. He considered her as a painter considers his unfinished work, whistling in his teeth as he wonders where he shall begin. Words and phrases sang and danced in his head, as he absorbed her again. Then he said, “Stangerd, you are like a morning in April, when the sun is breaking through the rain, and thinning it into mist. If I could stand always at this distance from you, Stangerd, and look at you like this, I should make songs which would be the music of all Iceland. But I can’t, and you know that I can’t, keep so far from you now, after what has been between you and me; and so I am going away from you, my golden wonder, and will put the blue water between us. What do you say to that?”

He spoke lightly and mockingly, or so she felt it. She governed herself therefore, so that he should never guess that she was unhappy. She picked up her needlework and took a stitch or two, as she said, “You will do as you please, I suppose. It is what you have always done. When will you sail?”

“Not yet, not yet,” he said. Then he came into the hall and stood near her, right over her. “So you tired of Berse, and have taken another husband?”

She said nothing to that. “By and by,” he went on, “you may be willing to have me.”

That time she could not answer him. He was hurting her.

He sat down beside her, and picked up an edge of the shift she was hemming. “I remember very well, when you and I were plighted, that I used to say you should be much married. You didn’t like it. It made you angry. But you have done it. You are much married; and now it is I who don’t like it. Do you remember that, Stangerd?”

She nodded, but could not look at him.

“I don’t like it at all,” he went on; “but I will tell you this--believe it or not as you will. When I wished to see you with many lovers, many husbands, Stangerd, I loved you much better than I do now.”

A large tear rolled down her cheek, and hung there, until it fell into her needlework. Cormac saw it gather and drop, but he did not alter his manner.

“I am going with my brother Thorgils to Norway,” he told her; “but I thought that I would come to see you again before I went. What are you making there?”

She told him--a shift.

“It is for yourself? You will wear it?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Why do you ask me?”

He said, “It would be strange if I was not interested in anything which will be as near to you as this linen. It would be strange if I felt very friendly-disposed towards it.”

“You need not tumble it in your hands, at least,” she said.

“I feel as if I were feeling about for a grip at its windpipe,” he said, then stopped himself with a short laugh, and let go of it.

“Will you do me a service?” he asked her.

“What do you want me to do?”

“That linen you are stitching would make me a shirt to wear over my mail. Will you make it for me instead of yourself?”

She looked at him quickly. “Are you going to wear mail? Are you going Viking?”

His eyes laughed. “I think so,” he said; “like my father before me--but not by any means for so good a reason.”

“What was your father’s reason?” she asked him; and he told her.

“He was a man of large mind and great passions. He felt that the world lay to the hand of the man who could handle it. He said that the might followed the mind. He was restless, and cramped in this country of stony hills and narrow dales and strait seas. The fire burned in him and he gave it vent. He went far and did greatly; he went often, and at last he never came back. But he died as he had lived, greatly.”

She thought that very fine, and expected much the same answer to her next question; but she did not get it.

“And what is your reason?”

“My reason is that I may forget that you ever lived and made me suffer,” he said plainly.

She bit her lips, and her eyes filled with smarting tears.

“You are ungenerous. You are a coward to say so. And it is not at all true. I was living at Nupsdale when you came there. I could not know that you were coming, or who you were that came. You saw me, and after that never left me alone. You taught me to love you--and then you left me, when you had made your songs about me. That was all you wanted out of me, I see very well. Well, go now, and make your songs of whom you will.”

He stood over her now, dark with rage. “Song! Song! What song is left in me? What have I left to sing of? The glory of song is departed from me. Once I had it like a running water in me, a well-spring that never ran dry. Then you came and dipped your hands in it, and it flowed all about you as if it would carry you away to the sea. And then it slept. It went when you were false to me.”

And now she jumped up, flaming. “I was never false to you. I was never false. You are lying. It was you who tired of me, and left me in the lurch on my wedding-day. I sat alone here in my crown, with my maids, waiting for you--and you did not come. Now go to sea or where you will--but leave me. I will never make a shirt for you, so long as I live.”

There where she stood, all flushed and splendid in her fury, he came to her and took her in his arms. Before she could stop him he had kissed her twice, roughly and fiercely. Then she broke away, and left him without another word.

But when she came back more than an hour later, he was still there in the same place. She stiffened her neck and squared her shoulders.

“I required you to go,” she said, “but you are still here. What sort of conduct is this, do you think? My father and my husband will be here soon, and there will be more trouble on your account. Has there not been enough?”

Cormac said, “Stangerd, I can’t go until you forgive me. I acted badly, I am very sorry.”

“You forgot yourself,” she said; “but I shan’t bear a grudge. Go in peace.”

“Yes,” he said, “I will go. But I shall see you again.”

“You cannot,” she told him. “Thorwald will be angry.”

“That makes no matter,” he said, “so long as you are not angry.”

She said, “Ah, but I shall be very angry if you use me so.” She spoke more kindly.

“I will not,” he said. “I will not touch you again, unless I go mad again.”

“That’s no promise at all,” she said.

“When you are angry,” he said, “I want you more than ever I did in my life. And you call up something in me which must subdue you at all costs. That’s the way of it. Fire calls to fire, and the two burn and leap together.”

She was grave now, and shook her head. “This must not be,” she said. “I shall go away from here as soon as I can.”

“You will do no good by that. I shall find you.”

“I hope you will not try.”

“I also hope so. I could not be happy with you if I had you--nor you with me.”

“Cormac,” she said, and touched his arm, “you must learn to do without me. It is not to be. Now I see very well that it was true what your brother Thorgils said when he was here that day--when you were not. He said that the spae-wife had put a spell upon our plighting, that you and I could never come together. And it is true; we have not, and we shall not.”

He seized both her hands. “Stangerd, come now--come with me! I am parcht with thirst.”

She tried to get away. “No, no, no! You can never drink of me.”

He implored her, he raved; but she was ready for him now. She was kind, but she would do nothing. Then she heard her people coming in, and told him to go. He said he would not unless she kissed him. She did it, but not as he wished.

He went out, brushing by Thorkel and Thorwald, who were coming in to dinner. He took no notice whatever of them; but Thorwald asked who he was.

Thorkel said shortly, “That’s a man whom I don’t want to see any more. That is Black Cormac of Melstead, a dangerous man. He has been after Stangerd, you may be sure. Now you must deal quietly with that man, or you will be sorry for it. He has brought more troubles to this house than enough.”

Thorwald brushed his nose with the golden end of his beard and was silent through dinner. Afterwards he asked Stangerd about Cormac. She told him that he was going abroad and had come to say good-bye.

Thorwald said he was glad to know that. “He was not very civil to Thorkel or to me.”

“He had no reason to be,” Stangerd said rather shortly.

Thorwald said, “You surprise me. What, is he to treat your husband like so much brushwood?”

“He is a man,” Stangerd replied, “who treats other men as he finds them. If they are friendly, so is he; if unfriendly, he is more so. If they are indifferent, so is he.”

“But,” said Thorwald, “I was not indifferent--though he was. How could I be indifferent to the men who come to visit you?”

“You had better learn to be indifferent when Cormac comes,” she said.

Thorwald was very surprised, and brushed his nose a long time, until she asked him to cease.

“And why, pray, am I to cease?” he asked.

She said, “Because I ask it.”

He found the reason bad. “Nobody has ever asked me that before.”

She said, “I hope that I shan’t have to ask it again.”

He considered this answer. “It’s a little trick I have,” he said.

She replied, “It’s a little trick I don’t like. It makes you look very foolish.”

“Nobody,” he said, “has ever told me so before.”

“I wish that somebody had,” said she, “for then it would not have been for me to tell you.”

He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Do you think it seemly to tell your husband that he looks foolish?”

She returned to her seat by the fire and her sewing. “I think it more seemly,” she said, “than that he should continue to look so.”