Gudrid the Fair Part 1

Gudrid the Fair.

by Maurice Hewlett.

PREFACE

This tale is founded upon two sagas, which have been translated literally and without attempt to accord their discrepancies by York Powell and Vigfussen in their invaluable _Origines Icelandicae_. As well as those versions I have had another authority to help me, in Laing's _Sea-Kings of Norway_. I have blent the two accounts into one, and put forward the result with this word of explanation, which I hope will justify me in the treatment I have given them.

I don't forget that a "saga" is history, and that these sagas in particular furnish an account of the first discovery of America, no less a thing. Nevertheless, while I have been scrupulous in leaving the related facts as I found them, I have not hesitated to dwell upon the humanity in the tales, and to develop that as seemed fitting. I don't think that I have put anything into the relation which is not implied in the few words accorded me by the text. I believe that everything I give Gudrid and Freydis, Karlsefne and Leif and Eric Red to say or to do can be made out from hints, which I have made it my business to interpret. Character makes plot in life as well as in fiction, and a novelist is not worthy of his hire who can't weave a tale out of one or two people to whom he has been able to give life.

All romantic invention proceeds from people or from atmosphere.

Therefore, while I have shown, I hope, due respect to the exploration of America, I admit that my tale turns essentially upon the explorers of it. My business as a writer of tales has been to explore them rather than Wineland the Good. I have been more interested in Gudrid's husbands and babies than I had need to be as an historian. I am sure the tale is none the worse for it--and anyhow I can't help it. If I read of a woman called Gudrid, and a handsome woman at that, I am bound to know pretty soon what colour her hair was, and how she twisted it up. If I hear that she had three husbands and outlived them all I cannot rest until I know how she liked them, how they treated her; what feelings she had, what feelings they had. So I get to know them as well as I know her--and so it goes on. Wineland does not fail of getting discovered, but meantime some new people have been born into the world who do the business of discovering while doing their own human business of love and marriage and childbirth.

All this, I say, is implicit in the saga-history. So it is, but it has to be looked for. The saga listeners, I gather, took character very much for granted, as probably Homer's audience did. Odysseus was full of wiles, Achilles was terrible, Paris "a woman-haunting cheat," Gunnar of Lithend a poet and born fighter, Nial a sage, and so on. The poet gave them more than that, of course. Poetry apart, he did not disdain psychology. There is plenty psychology in both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--less in the sagas, but still it is there. And when you come to know the persons of these great inventions there is as much psychology as any one can need, or may choose to put there--as much as there is in _Hamlet_, as much as there is in _La Guerre et La Paix_.

In Kormak's Saga, for instance, which I put forward some years ago as _A Lover's Tale_, is there no psychology? It is no way out of it to put down Kormak's tergiversations to sorcery. I doubt if that was good enough for the men who first heard the tale; it is certainly no good to us. In the strange barbaric recesses of the tale of Gunnar Helming and Frey's wife, what are we to make of it all unless we reckon with the states of poor Sigrid's soul, married to a gog-eyed wooden G.o.d? How came Halgerd to betray Gunnar to his foes, how came Nial to be burned in his bed? Can one read _Laxdale_ and not desire to read through it into the proud heart of Gudrun?

And having once begun with them one could go on, I believe, until the hearts of all those fine, straight-dealing people were as plain to us as those of our superfine, sophisticated moderns. For Nature is still our mother and mistress, no less now than she ever was--and that's a good thing for the story-reader as well as for the story-teller.

Out of the Saga of Thorgils, which is a tale of Greenland's exploration, I hope that I drew a portrait of a good Icelander. Out of Eric's Saga and Karlsefne's Saga combined I believe there is a no less faithful picture of a good Icelandish woman. Gudrid was wise as well as fair, if I have read her truly; she was a good woman, wife and mother. The discovery of Wineland is to my own feelings quite beside the mark where she is involved; but I have put it all in, and wish there had been more of it. Psychology and romantic imagination will not help us much there. We want the facts, and they fail us. All that can be made out is that Karlsefne sailed up the Hudson. His Scraelings were Esquimaux. But who was the black-kirtled woman who appeared to Gudrid and gave herself the same name? And where was the Maggoty Sea?

And what goaded Freydis to her dreadful deeds? I admire Freydis myself; I think she was a _femme incomprise_. I have taken pains with Freydis, though personally I had rather been Gudrid's fourth husband than Freydis's first.

I am not afraid of the accusation of vulgarising the cla.s.sics. It is good that they should be loved, and if simplification and amplification humanise them I can stand the charge with philosophy. Of all cla.s.sics known to me the sagas are the most unapproachable in their naked strength. Their frugality freezes the soul; they are laconic to baldness. I admire strength with anybody, but the starkness of the sagas shocks me. When Nial lies down by his old wife's side with the timbers roaring and crackling over his head, and Skarphedin, his son, says, "Our father goes early to bed, but that was to be expected, as he is an old man," Professor Ker, exulting in his strength, finds it admirable. I say it is inadequate, and not justified to us by what else the saga tells us of the speaker. I am sure that Skarphedin had more to say, or that if he had not the poet could have expressed him better. It recalls the humorous callousness of our soldiers, which, nakedly rendered, is often shocking. This is, however, not really the point. Terseness may be dramatic--it often is, as in "Cover her face--mine eyes dazzle--She died young"--but in narrative it may check instead of provoke the imagination. But if it provoke, is it not reasonable to let the imagination go to work upon it? If Skarphedin indeed took his father's death in that manner, is one not justified in going to work with Skarphedin, to find out what manner of man he was who could so express himself in supreme crisis? I trace a great deal of our soldiers' crude jesting at death to their Scandinavian blood; and nothing more intensely and painfully interesting has ever been given to the imagination to work upon than their conduct in the face of horror and sin of late, so dauntless, so blithe and so grim as it is.

Where heroism has been so shown on all sides of us in these three dreadful years, it is no longer possible to pick and choose heroic nations. One might otherwise have said that no such heroes were ever given to the world as the heroes of Iceland. That they are not accepted as such on all hands is no fault of the literature which presents them; for that literature, like all great art, makes demands upon its readers. It hands over the key, but if the lock is stiff it will not give you oil for the wards. That you must find for yourself.

Oil for the wards is all I can pretend to here; and if I may say that I have humanised a tale of endurance, and clothed demiG.o.ds and shadows in flesh and blood, I shall feel that I have done useful work, and bear charges of vulgarisation with a philosophy which a.s.sures me that the two terms are much of a muchness.

The great gestures, the large-scale maps, the grand manner are for history and epic, but genre for the novel--and what _genre_ is so momentous to it as the human? Let Homer describe the wrath of Achilles and the pa.s.sion of Hektor and Andromache. The novelist will want to know what Brises felt when she was handed from hero to hero, will pore upon the matronly charity of Theano, the agony of the two young men Achilles slew by Skamander, and find the psychology of these p.a.w.ns in the great game as enthralling as that of the high movers. I confess that to me Gudrid, the many times a wife and the always sweet and reserved, is more absorbing a tale than the discovery of Wineland. I like the two running Scots better than their country, would barter all Greenland for the tale of the winter sickness in Thorstan Black's house. So much apology I feel moved to offer for having put down Exploration from the chief place in the tale, and put up a wife and mother.

As for the verse--Gudrid's Wardlock chant is adapted from the Lay of Swipday and Merglad in _Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale_, I, 92 _seq_., and Thorstan's Song of Helgi and Sigrun is a partial version of that epic (_ibid_. 131).

GUDRID THE FAIR

I

Thorbeorn was old when this tale begins. His face was lean, his beard was grey, he stooped somewhat in the saddle. But he had a fiery mind, a high spirit, and was so rich, or believed so, that men said he could buy off Death more likely than any other man, seeing he would neither fail of hardihood nor money.

By this time, old age apart, he had done very well for himself, having not only buried a wife, but married another; having not only seen three sons out into the world and become a grandfather twice over; but having had also, by his second wife, whose name was Hollweg, a daughter, and an estate of Bathbrink which could be hers by and by, if he so pleased.

This daughter was by name Gudrid, and by all men's consent Gudrid the Fair. Iceland has always been famous for handsome women; but three are chiefly commemorated as "the Fair." The first is Gudrun, who was daughter of Oswif; but she was now old. The second is Stangerd, daughter of Thorkel of Tongue, and at this time the wife of Battle-Berse of Sowerby in the north-west parts. This Gudrid, Thorbeorn's daughter, is the third, and was, at the moment, of marriageable age, being full fifteen years old.

She was a tall girl, well and beautifully made, with carriage so graceful and look so courteous that men used to stop in the road and gaze after her as she walked. Her hair was very nearly black, and made a plait which she could easily sit upon. She was no talker, but had the best of manners, whereby it happened that those who talked with her were eloquent and believed that she had been so. She had a beautiful voice and notable skill in singing. Men heard her songs, and rushed out into the dark emulous of desperate work, and the sooner the better, to deserve well of her. Thorbeorn was very proud of her; but it had been her mother's work to have her carefully trained. If she had lived this tale might not have been written; but she did not. She died a year before it begins, and left her old husband to a peck of troubles.

Thorbeorn was the last man to cope with trouble. He was too proud, too vain, and too idle--too proud to confide, too vain to accept, too idle to repair. He had always kept a great table and had a hall full of guests. He had them still, though he had not the money to pay for them. He borrowed on his property, and borrowed again to repay the first loans; he had ventures at sea, which failed him. He might have had help from his sons, but would not ask them. When Gudrid was fifteen years old these things vexed him sadly; but what vexed him more was that young men came to Bathbrink to see if they could get speech with her; and that some of them put forward friends with proposals to marry her. So far he had refused to treat with any. "It is not to be thought of," he generally said; sometimes, "It is very unsuitable"; and once, "I am greatly offended." Not that he did not fully intend to have her married--rather it was that he had a rooted belief in the greatness of his family and in the girl's merits, and could find none of the suitors at all equal to them.

He was one of those men who rather wish to believe in themselves than do it. He was always on the look-out for flaws upon his mettle. He thought that Gudrid was unapproachable, and when he found that she was not, fretted to make her so. But Gudrid herself was not at all unapproachable. She liked the company of her equals in age, and saw no reason why young men should not be anxious to talk to her, or why, if they hung about with the generality at the lower end of the hall, they should not be invited to the fire. With the girls in the bower she talked freely of courts.h.i.+ps, and of young men. Thorbeorn would have been cut to the heart to hear her. It might have been better for him to have such a wound than the wound which actually he did receive.

He was riding home late one autumn evening. The weather was still mild and warm. Nearing home, he turned his horse on to the turf and walked him, with the reins hanging loose. Presently he was aware of two figures together under a clump of trees. One of them he saw at once for Gudrid. The other was a man, he knew not whom. Immediately hot water sprang into his eyes and veiled their sight, but he saw enough to guess more.

The pair were taking leave of each other. Their hands were clasped, their arms at length. They were far apart, the man talking, Gudrid listening. Then presently the strain on the arms relaxed, their clasped hands fell; they were near together. Gudrid, he saw, hung her head--and then, suddenly, the man put his other arm about her neck, and drew her to him and kissed her cheek. At that she broke away and ran towards the house. The man, looking after her for a little, then vaulted the turf wall and ran down the hillside towards the river, making great skips and jumps over the tussocks and boulders, as if he were as happy as a man could be. That was what Thorbeorn saw in the autumn dusk.

He went home in a dreadful state of mind, and could hardly bear to be served supper by his desecrated daughter. To think that those soft cheeks had been profaned by a strange youth, that those grave young eyes had looked kindly upon another than himself, that that fair hand had clasped another's in kindness--all this seemed to him horrible. He thought her a hypocrite; he thought himself insulted. Yet even he had to admit that the kiss was sudden, and she evidently surprised and (since she ran away at once) probably frightened. He judged that she was a novice at such work, but for all that was very much afraid that she took kindly to it.

He spent a great part of the night thinking it over, and before he went to sleep had made up his mind. Early in the morning he was out and about; before the day-meal he sent for Gudrid. She came, singing to herself, fresh as a rose and as fair. She asked his pleasure--and he had not the heart to tell her his displeasure. What he did say was this: "Put your gear together as soon as you can. I am taking you to Erne Pillar, where you will be put in fosters.h.i.+p with Orme." Gudrid looked up startled, and saw in her father's eyes what she had not seen before. Her own eyes fell, she coloured up, turned and went away, to do as she was told.

It may be said at once that she had done very little harm, and none knowingly. The young man, who was one of the several who came to the house, was the son of a neighbour, a man of repute. Gudrid favoured him no more than any of the others, but it had so happened that he had been there that afternoon, talking with the girls, and that Gudrid had walked with him as far as the trees on his way home. He had protracted the farewells, and had s.n.a.t.c.hed a kiss; she had been frightened and run away. That might have happened to anybody--but she knew now that Arnkel had had no business at the house when her father was not there.

That could not be denied. She went soberly about her preparations, and the girls were full of pity. They talked it over and over, but there was nothing to be done. Her bundles and bales were corded upon the sumpter's back. She embraced and kissed her housemates. There were wet cheeks and trembling lips involved, but they were not hers. Then she was put up before her father, and away she went.

As for young Arnkel, he no more comes into the tale than he had stayed in Gudrid's mind.

II

Orme was a friend of Thorbeorn's, and a prosperous man. He lived at Erne Pillar, which is below Snaefellness, and near the sea. There was a haven there and a town. Moreover it was a Christian settlement, with a church and a priest. Most of the houses and land there belonged to Orme, who lived in a good house of his own with his wife Halldis. They had no children, which was a grief to them.

Thorbeorn brought Gudrid to the house, and had a good reception from the goodman and his wife. "Take her with you, good wife, into your bower," he said, "while I have a word with Orme. He will tell you all about it, or I will. It is good for me to be sure that it makes no matter which of us tells you."

Halldis said, it was easy to see that Gudrid was not making a short stay, and took her with her through the house into the bower. There, it was not long before she knew all that Thorbeorn or Orme could have to say, and may be more still.

Meantime, Thorbeorn, after much unnecessary havers, said to Orme: "The matter is this, neighbour. I ask you and the goodwife to take Gudrid here in fosters.h.i.+p. It will suit me in every way, and I hope you will agree to it."

Orme said that it would suit him too very well. "Nothing the mistress would like better than to see herself reflected in a young pair of eyes." Thorbeorn accepted that as a matter of course; but presently he asked whether they saw much company at Erne Pillar.

Not such a deal of company, Orme said. Now and again a s.h.i.+p came in, and there was a bustle, with men coming and going, cheapening the goods. "Nothing to you at Bathbrink, I daresay," he added. "They tell me that you keep a great house up there--as is fitting you should."

"I have to remember what is expected of me," Thorbeorn said, and felt that he was no nearer what he wanted to say than he had been.

"Gudrid is young," he said, beginning again.

"She's a beauty, it's evident," Orme said briskly, and instantly Thorbeorn felt himself bristling down the backbone.

"She is sought after on all hands--but not by any who is to my liking.

I hope that Halldis will look after her well."

"She will look after her like one of her own," said Orme. Thorbeorn had rather he had said more than that. He could not understand that Orme did not see what was at stake, and yet could not enlighten him further. The good wife then came springing in.

"She will be happy, and so shall we be," she said. "I have a roomy heart, too long empty, woe's me. She will soon be singing about the house, and then we old folks will fall to it. It will be like a nest of linnets. She will scour our rusty pipes for us. Excellent!"

Thorbeorn was put out that they seemed to think it pure pleasure to have his daughter on their hands instead of great responsibility and a call to duty.

"Well," he said, "you have helped me with a serious trouble. I leave her to you with confidence. Where is she now? For I must be going."

"She is with the girls in the wash-house," said Halldis. "All chattering together like starlings on a thatch. All talking at once, and none listening. Do you wish her fetched?"