"Ah, father, dear father, I cannot."
"Why not, Helga? Have you anything against him? Is he not young, handsome, and strong? Is he not brave and good? Could you find me a better son, or yourself a more loving husband? Tell me, are you influenced in this matter by those foolish dreams, the wild images of your brain? Tell the truth, Helga."
She looked at him in trembling entreaty.
"Ah, my father, forgive me."
"If you want to make your old father happy, say Yes, and become Olaffson"s wife; if you wish to poison my last days with sorrow, then leave my wish unfulfilled."
With these words the old man turned away in anxious grief, and moved towards the house.
Helga hastened after him.
"Do not be angry, my father," she begged; "I will fulfil your wish, come what will."
"I thank you, my good child; but what do you fear? What could come of it but a father"s blessing, with its fruits of happiness and peace?"
So Helga became Olaffson"s wife.
Did the Flower of Iceland now regain its freshness and bloom? Alas!
no. In spite of her father"s tenderness and her husband"s love, she still remained sorrowful and pale; deeper, if anything, was the shadow that oppressed her soul. To longing was now added remorse, the bitterest feeling that can disturb a human heart, for it is the only one for which time has no balm.
"How could I ever rob you of your claim to immortality?" she had once said to the poor fairy king; and even though the words had been only spoken in a dream, yet they burned into her soul, and when she consented to be Olaffson"s wife, it seemed to her as if she had really shut out that poor spirit from the heavenly paradise.
The short summer pa.s.sed, and Helga shuddered more than ever under the icy breath of the northern winter; but it too went by, and spring came at last across the ocean to Iceland"s snowy plains. The roads were once more pa.s.sable, and the first sacrament of the year was to be solemnised in the church of the parish to which the farm held by Helga"s father belonged. Olaffson asked his wife to partake with him of the sacred symbols, and she gladly consented. Perhaps she thought this feast of reconciliation might bring back her long-lost peace.
She went about her work with more energy than she had shown for many months, so anxious was she to have everything in readiness for the morrow, for they would have to set out early in order to reach the distant church in time for the service. She was just laying the table for supper when she saw her husband pa.s.sing the window, and by his side a stranger of tall and manly form.
"See, Helga," said Olaffson as they entered, "I bring an honoured guest; set out your best provisions, for he has travelled far, and is in need of refreshment."
Helga looked at the stranger. His face was handsome, but over his youthful features sorrow had pa.s.sed with heavy hand. But when he raised his deep blue eyes to Helga, and asked in soft and melodious tones--"Will the Flower of Iceland permit a stranger to rest beneath her roof?" a shudder pa.s.sed through her frame, and the old conflict began in her soul more wildly and perplexingly than ever.
These eyes, this voice, could they have spoken to her only in a feverish dream? And if she had been deceived--what then? The thought threatened to rob her of reason; but Olaffson stepped up to her and said--
"Our guest must be tired and hungry, my Helga; will you not grant him the welcome which the stranger has always met beneath this roof?"
Helga recovered herself by a great effort, and went out to prepare a room for the mysterious guest, while the latter sat down at table with the others. Then she slipped softly back, took a seat in a dark corner, and gazed with mingled anxiety and longing on the stranger"s face.
"Look here, sir," said Helga"s father, pointing to the sky, "do you ever see anything like that in your native land? Do you not acknowledge Iceland to be the most beautiful country in the world?"
"Yes," said the stranger, "your land is indeed beautiful; but your home and mine are not so very far distant from one another."
He glanced at Helga--of whose presence the others were not aware--then he described the land in which he lived, the same land that Helga was said to have seen only in the delirium of fever.
She listened with breathless attention. It seemed to her as if the splendour of fairyland once more surrounded her. She saw the blue waves rolling at her feet, and felt herself, as in days gone by, rocking on their gleaming crests. She ran merrily to the side of the fountain and caught at the water, that she might sprinkle it in sport on the birds; and she saw the transparent flowers bending their fragrant cups in friendly greeting. Every moment she expected to see the stranger throw aside his disguise, and, standing before her in royal purple, touch the long-disused strings of his golden harp.
Alas! her father had then deceived her that he might keep her at home; her heart had told her the truth, and she, instead of listening to its entreaties, had weakly yielded to persuasion, and broken her sacred promise. And now? Too late, too late--all was over. Full of grief and despair, she hastened out of the house to pour out her heart in bitter weeping amid the stillness of the night.
Next morning, when all was ready for the journey, when the horses were stamping impatiently before the door, the family all a.s.sembled to conform to an old Icelandic custom. In that island, before any family partake of the sacrament, each member asks forgiveness of all the rest for wrongs consciously or unconsciously committed. Helga took her father"s hand and her husband"s. "Forgive me for all the anxiety I have caused you," she begged in a low voice; then she added the mysterious words, "and also for the sorrow that I am about to bring upon you."
"You must also ask forgiveness of our guest, Helga, in case you have offended him," said Olaffson. "You were not to be found yesterday when he wanted to bid you good-night."
She shuddered, cast a farewell glance on her father"s face, and moved towards the stranger"s room.
Yes, it was as she felt and knew. The dark garment of yesterday had disappeared; before her stood the fairy king in radiant beauty, with his golden hair flowing down over his purple robe.
She clasped her hands in silent entreaty, and her beautiful eyes looked up with love and humility to the face of her beloved but deeply-wronged husband.
"Helga, Helga," said he gravely, "is this how you have been faithful to your love and your promise?"
"Oh, do not be angry with me," begged Helga; "to your spirit-eye nothing has been hidden; you know how it all came about--how my anxiety for you drove me to seek you--how my father found me, and how I was going to show him our kingdom in order to set his mind at rest.
You know that the gates were closed against me, and that I was borne back unconscious to my old home--that they kept me there by cleverly-invented stories, and that at last my father"s entreaties forced me to the last and hardest step. But you know also that I have loved only you, that my heart is yours alone."
"Be judged by thine own words, O Flower of Iceland!" replied the fairy king quietly. "Why didst thou not listen to the voice of thy heart? We fairies know nothing of human weakness, therefore we cannot forgive it. Dost thou know the fate that now awaits thee, Helga?"
"I know it well," answered Helga firmly, "and if my mouth has been unfaithful, my heart has been true. I welcome death, for it will reunite me to you!"
Then a happy smile pa.s.sed over the fairy king"s n.o.ble countenance; he stretched out his arms, and pressed Helga dying to his heart.
Finding that his wife did not come back, Olaffson hastened with his father-in-law to the stranger"s room. They found fair Helga in the fairy king"s arms. Both were cold and dead; in the same moment both hearts had broken. Olaffson tried to take Helga away from the stranger"s arms, but in vain. What life had robbed him of, he held in death with a grasp that could not be loosed.
"Leave them, my son," said the old grief-stricken father; "she is his by right. What has all our prudence done for us? Worse than nothing!
The fairy king has reclaimed his own in spite of us."
They laid them in the same coffin, and next morning the soil of Iceland was to receive them into its cold lap. But in the night that followed this eventful day, sleep fell more heavily than usual on the eyes of the mourners. They did not hear the whispering of gentle voices or the hasty tread of many feet. They did not see the mult.i.tude of fairies who had a.s.sembled from all parts of the island to show the last honour to their beloved king. Noiselessly the spirits lifted the coffin, carried it out of the house, and away to the rock where fair Helga had begged in vain for admission.
To-day it was not denied her. The magic gates sprang open as the coffin approached. With drooping wings the white birds hovered round, and mourned the royal pair in notes of soft lamentation.
At the sh.o.r.e of the beautiful blue sea the faithful spirits lowered their burden. There Helga and her fairy husband rest beneath the flowers of this paradise, and beside the gentle murmur of the waves.
On the branches of the cypress that grows on their grave hangs the fairy king"s harp. The hand is cold that once touched its chords; but when the morning breeze sweeps through them, they sound as of old in magic melody. The sweet notes float on the sunbeams through the evergreen paradise, pierce the hard rock, and hover as beautiful and undying legends over Iceland"s heaths and snow-clad hills.
THE SEA-FAIRY.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD MAN BESIDE THE CORPSE OF ANTONIO.]
The evening sun was sinking in a glow of colour on the waters of the North Atlantic and on the rocky coast of Norway as a youth wandered alone by the edge of one of its numerous fiords.
He was alone in the world; father and mother, brothers and sisters, were all dead, and he strove to still the longings of his heart by the wonders of foreign lands.
He had seen the midnight sun from the cliffs of the North Cape, and his eye now rested in astonished admiration on the firmament and the ocean, which shone in a splendour unknown to other zones. He stepped close up to the edge of the sea, and looked down at the waves, which here broke in gold-sparkling foam. But from yon rock but a few yards distant he would be better able to enjoy the ever-changing play of the waves; so he went up to it, and laid his hand on one of its jagged projections to aid him in climbing. Then he saw something white and golden gleaming at his feet, and when he leant forward to observe it more closely he saw that it was the form of a young woman who was sitting in solitude on this uninhabited strand. Over her garment, white as spring blossoms, down to the purple hem, fell hair golden as the waves at her feet, and her tender hands lay clasped upon her knee, while she, dreamy and motionless, looked out upon the sea.
The young man scarcely ventured to breathe lest he should frighten her; but a stone loosened beneath his hand and rolled rattling to the ground. She looked up and turned her head, and now his glance met a face of unimagined beauty.
"Who art thou?" she asked, in gentle astonishment; "and what seekest thou here on this world-forsaken sh.o.r.e?"