Chapter XXIII: Stangerd Goes to the Fleet

Now the poet of whom I spoke a long time ago as having his own idea of Cormac’s affair, singing about his troth broken on his wedding-day, says:

“But of this matter, when Cormac,
Betroth’d, handfasted as he was,
Lover accepted, yet drew back
At the last hour, a thing unchancy--
Witch-finders hint at spell or curse
Upon the plighting. Each man has
His own curse in him, and my fancy
Sees Cormac storing her to heart
To sing about in sounding verse,
Making a goddess of a lass,
Not better but so much the worse
The more herself has art and part
In the business. Call this nigromancy
Done by the spae-wife out of spite--
I tell you, Love’s a tricksy sprite
For poets’ bosoms. Love says, Kiss
Your well-belov’d, she’ll kiss again,
Apt pupil; but it’s also true
The more you kiss, the more you strain
Together, the less lover you,
And the more she. Skald’s wisdom is
To love apart, since love is pain
At all events, howe’er you do;
And out of pain that Song cometh
The which you live by, as by bread
Live some, and other some by kiss
(As women all). Where there are two,
And one a poet, one must rue.
Here it was Stangerd, as the case is
Whene’er a girl accepts the embraces
Of poet-lover.”

And he’s right, there’s no doubt. But Cormac could not be expected to know that.

What puzzled the young man, however, was this, that he felt happier, more uplifted, as he went away from Stangerd than he had known himself to be when he was with her. In her presence all the wicked feelings which beset mankind had been about him--rage, greed, grudging, jealousy, and the rest of them. Her beauty had made his heart blacker; the more he needed her the less fit he felt himself to touch the border of her gown. But now he had left her, the clouds parted, and she shone dazzling like the sun in the blue sky. To love her was not only reasonable, but it was a career. It was food and drink, occupation and fame. It was a fire within him which would never go out--unless he saw her. Strange freak of fate that he could only love her when he didn’t see her!

He was happier than he had been for a year or more. He began to sing again, naturally, like a bird.

“Ah, now indeed I have her--now
When I am leaving her for good.
For good? Ah, yes, for now I know
What Christians call their heavenly food.
You see no flesh, you taste no blood,
The holy flake shines like the snow;
The sweet thin wine has the red flow,
But not the salt that drencht the Rood.
Now I have feasted as I would
And go my way with a full heart:
Stangerd and I shall never part
If I can keep this holy mood.”

And in this mood he remained for the rest of the day, finding himself strong enough to think of her without needing to see or to touch her.

In the morning he found himself down on the lees again, and life a brackish flat business unless there was a hope of seeing Stangerd. But he fought with himself, and to such purpose that he set a day for sailing and kept to it.

They all went aboard, men and horses, and headed for the Floe with a fair wind on their quarter. That was four or five days after he had seen Stangerd; but meantime Thorwald had taken her off to Fleet.

He took her off the very next day, in fact, after his unceremonious meeting with Cormac in the entry of the house. He got the whole story out of Thorkel that night, and the more of it he got the less he liked it. It wasn’t so much that he shirked an encounter with Cormac, even though he was not much of a fighter. He explained to Thorkel how he felt about it.

“Stangerd,” he said, “was very short with me after Cormac had been with her. No man cares to be thought tiresome. I am not at all accustomed to it; I have always been treated with respect. I am a weighty, sententious man, and I know it. But if these handsome, flashing poets get about a young woman, she is dazzled. She fills herself with their heady drink, their spiced food, and turns up her nose at the good roast or soused, at the good white bread or curdy cheese upon which the body is built up. It is so. I wish my wife to admire me. Is that so extraordinary? She will be happier if she can do it, and so shall I be. Now when I was talking to her about her Cormac, I noticed that little tricks of mine with the beard seemed to vex her. I have an uncommon beard: it has often been noticed. But all she had to say of it was to ask me not to brush my nose with it. That was distressing. It can’t go on like this. Within the first few days of a man’s married life, to feel that a man is ridiculous in his wife’s eyes intimidates a man.”

So he took her away to Fleet, a long way from Midfirth, where there is more open water; and there she began her housekeeping.