The Snake Pit (33 page)

Then it was as though his eyes lost their power of sight, and his blood rushed back to his heart, so that he grew outwardly cold as a dead man. All this was as it were within him: his own soul was as this house, destined for a church, but empty, without God; darkness and disorder reigned within, but the only sparks of light that burned and sent out warmth were gathered about the image of the rejected Lord, Christ crucified, bearing the burden and the suffering of his sin and his despair.—
Vade, et amplius jam noli peccare.

My Lord and my God! Yea, Lord, I come—I come, for I love Thee. I love Thee, and I acknowledge:
Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci—
against Thee alone have I sinned, and done evil in Thy sight.—He had said these words a thousand times, and only now did he know that this was the truth that held all other truths in itself as in a cup.

My God and my all!—

Then someone touched him on the shoulder—he gave a start: it was Lavrans Björgulfsson; the horses were standing in the garth. This was the shorter way—the young man went in front, up through the church, into the choir. Now that Olav’s eyes were used to the darkness he could make out the altar—the naked stone, as yet undedicated and unadorned, a cold, dead heart. There was a little door on the south of the choir:

“Look how you go—the steps are not finished—” Lavrans jumped down into the snow. Out in the yard stood two of the friars. One held the horses, the other carried a lantern. Lavrans must have told them how things stood, for one of them came up
to Olav—it was one of those who had been with Sira Hallbjörn, and he had come out to Hestviken once. Olav knew the monk’s face, but did not remember his name.

“Patiently and meekly she bore it all, your wife. Ay, and now it is Brother Stefan who is with her—ay, we shall remember her in our prayers here too tonight.”

The north wind was at their backs as they rode over the ice—long stretches of it were like steel, swept of the little snow that had fallen lately. The moon would not rise till toward morning; the night was black and strewn with stars.

“We shall have to ride up to Skog,” said Olav’s guide, “and get fur cloaks on.”

It was a great manor, Olav saw—many great houses stretching away in the darkness. Young Lavrans sprang from the saddle, unhindered by the long folds of his mantle, stretched his tall, supple frame, and went across and opened the door of one of the houses. Then he stood by his horse, caressing and talking to it, till a man came out with a lantern—the light seemed to hover over the snow.

“You must dismount, Olav, and come in with me.” He took the lantern from his man and showed the way across the courtyard. “We live where we have been since we were married—my stepmother and Aasmund, my brother, have the great house, as in father’s time—” he seemed to take it for granted that everyone knew all about the great people of Skog.

“Is your father dead?” asked Olav for the sake of saying something.

“Ay, ’tis a year and half since—”

“You are young though—to be master of this great manor.”

“I? not so young either—I am three and twenty winters old.” He opened a door. They did not seem to bar their houses here at Skog. Through an anteroom they entered a little hall, warm and tidy. Lavrans lighted a thick tallow candle that stood near a curtained bed, threw the pine torch on the hearth, and spoke to someone within the bed. He handed in some woman’s clothes behind the curtain.

A moment after, a young woman stepped out, lightly clad, with a red cloak over her long, blue shift—she was tucking locks of jetblack
hair under the coif she had flung around her narrow, large-eyed face. While she busied herself, with easy, youthful briskness, her husband lay half-hidden within the bed. There were sounds of a little child behind the curtains, and the young father laughed aloud:

“Nay, Haavard—will you pull your father’s nose off? Leave go now. Or maybe you want to feel if ’tis frozen off me—” The hidden youngster choked with laughter.

The mistress had brought in food from the closet and offered her guest a foaming bowl of ale. Olav thanked her, but shook his head—he could no more eat and drink now than if he had been dead. Lavrans shook off the child he was playing with, came up, and took some food standing.

“You must give me a drink of water then, Ragnfrid.—My wife and I have made a vow to drink naught but water in Lent, except we be in company with guests or on a journey”; he gave an affectionate look at the foaming bowl of ale. With a little crooked smile Olav accepted the draught of welcome, took a taste of it, and passed the bowl to the master of the house, who now did justice to his guest—the young man did not seem minded to say good-bye to the slight intoxication that had been on him when they left Oslo. It had been passing off as they rode along, but now he made up for it, generously.

The single draught he had taken worked upon Olav so that he felt awakened from his ecstasy. Gone was the strange sense that all he saw and felt was a shadow, but that he himself had been taken away this night by God from the paths of men, brought before His face alone in a desolate spot—for now He willed that this His creature should understand at last.—And he heard all sounds from the visible world outside as he heard the voice of the fiord under the crags at home in Hestviken, sensed them without hearing. Voices reached him as though they were speaking outside a closed hall, where he was alone with the Voice which adjured and complained, full of love and sorrow:
O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus!

But now the door of the closed room was thrown open, the Voice was silent—and he sat in a strange house with total strangers, the night was far spent, and he was to find his way through country that was quite unknown to him ere he reached home. And
there death awaited him, and the choice that, as he now saw, he had made more and more difficult for himself every day and every year he had put it off. But now he
must
choose—he knew that, as he sat here feeling dazed and frozen, roused out of his strange visionary state: after that vision or whatever it might have been, he could not go on drowsily hoping that one day God would choose for him—
force
him.

So many a time had he allowed himself to be driven out of his road, upon false tracks that he had no desire to follow. Long ago he had acknowledged the truth of Bishop Torfinn’s words: the man who is bent upon doing his own will shall surely see the day when he finds he has done that which he never willed. But he perceived that this kind of will was but a random shot, an arrow sent at a venture.—He still had his own inmost will, however, and it was as a sword. When he was called to Christianity, he had been given this free will, as the chieftain gives his man a sword when he makes him a knight. If he had shot away all his other weapons, marred them by ill use—this right to choose whether he would follow God or forsake Him remained a trusty blade, and his Lord would never strike it out of his hand. Though his faith and honour as a Christian were now stained like the misused sword of a traitor knight, God had not taken it from him; he might bear it still in the company of our Lord’s enemies, or restore it kneeling to that Lord, who yet was ready to raise him to His bosom, greet him with the kiss of peace, and give him back his sword, cleansed and blessed.

Olav felt a vehement desire to be left alone with these thoughts—though he did not forget that this young Lavrans had shown himself very kindly, and he knew it might be difficult for him to reach home that night without the other’s help. But the young folk troubled and disturbed him by their constant services. The wife knelt before him and would help him change his boots—she had brought out foot-clouts of thick homespun and big fur boots stuffed with straw. The scent of her skin and hair was wafted to him, warm and healthy—it made him shrink within himself, as though to ward it off. The young mother breathed a fragrance of all the things in life from which he had been led away step by step, until tonight he saw that he was parted from them as completely as though he had already taken a monk’s vows.

The husband came in with his arms full of fur clothing and set
about finding something that would fit his guest. Olav was queerly abashed to see how much too large for him the other’s clothes were—he was quite lost in them when he got them on. Olav’s broad shoulders gave him a look of bulk, and the other seemed so slight; but he was doubtless more substantial than he looked, and he was tall besides. And in the pride of his grief Olav felt mortified that he should appear a lesser man than Lavrans Björgulfsson in everything, stature and worship and power—this tall, fair-skinned boy who breathed this air of home with wife and child, who was master of this rich knightly manor, helpful, kind, and well content. He had a long face with handsome, powerful features, but his cheeks were still smooth and of a childlike roundness; life had not marked his young and healthy skin with a single scratch—was never likely to do so either: he looked as though destined to take his course through the world without ever meeting sorrow.

Olav protested that he could well find his own way through the forest in Skeidissokn, and Lavrans must not think of riding from home so late at night for his sake in this cold. But his host was quick to reply that, as it had not snowed properly for so long, the forest was full of old trails; a man must be well acquainted with the paths by Gerdarud to find the shortest way. And as for a night out of doors—nay, he made nothing of that.

Outside in the courtyard a groom held two fresh horses, fine, active animals. An excellent horseman was this young squire, and he had the best of horses. Olav was secretly vexed that he had to be given a hand in mounting—it was these boots that were far too big.

The road lay through forest most of the time, and the thin coating of snow was frozen hard and broken in every direction by old, worn tracks of ski-runners, horsemen, and sledges—and the moon could not be expected for an hour yet. Olav guessed that he might have strayed far and wide ere he had found his way out of these woods alone.

At last they came through some small coppices and saw Skeidis church ahead of them on the level. The moon, rather less than full, had just risen and hung low above the hills in the north-east. In the slanting, uncertain moonbeams the plain was raked with shadows, for the snow had been blown into drifts with bare
patches of glimmering crust between; all at once Olav recalled the night when he fled to Sweden—more than twenty years ago. It must have been the waning moon that reminded him—then too he had had to wait for moonrise and had started at about this time of night, he remembered now.

He told his guide that from here he was well acquainted with the roads southward, thanking Lavrans for his help and promising to send the horse north again at the first opportunity.

“Ay, ay—God help you, Master Olav—may you find it better at home than you look for.—Farewell!”

Olav remained halted until the sound of the other’s horse had died away in the night. Then he turned into the road that bore south and west. It was fairly level here, and the road was well worn and good for long stretches; he could ride fast. It was not far now from farm to farm.

The moon rose higher, quenching the smaller stars, and its greenish light began to flood the firmament and spread over the white fields and the grey forest; the shadows shrank and grew small.

Once the crowing of a cock rang out through the moonlight; it was answered from farms far away, and Olav became aware how still the night was. Not a dog barked in any of the farms, no animal called, there was not a sound but that of his own horse’s hoofs, as he rode in solitude.

And again it was as though he were rapt away to another world. All life and all warmth had sunk down, lay in the bonds of frost and sleep like the swallows at the bottom of a lake in wintertime. Alone he journeyed through a realm of death, over which the cold and the moonlight threw a vast, echoing vault, but from the depths the Voice resounded within him, incessantly:

O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendue, et videte, si est dolor si cut dolor meus!

Bow down, bow down, yield himself and lay his life in those pierced hands as a vanquished man yields his sword into the hands of the victorious knight. In this last year, since he had turned adulterer, he had always refused to think of God’s mercy—it would be unmanly and dishonourable to look for it now. So long had he feared and fled from the justice of men—should he pray for mercy
now,
when his case had grown so old that perhaps he would be spared paying the full price of it among men? Something
old him that, having evaded men’s justice, he must be honest enough not to try to elude the judgment of God.

But tonight, as he journeyed under the winter moon like one who has been snatched out of time and life, on the very shore of eternity, he saw the truth of what he had been told in childhood: that the sin above all sins is to despair of God’s mercy. To deny that heart which the lance has pierced the chance of forgiving. In the cold, dazzling light he saw that this was the pang he had himself experienced, so far as a man’s heart can mirror the heart of God—as a puddle in the mire of the road may hold the image of
one
star, broken and quivering, among the myriads clustered in the firmament.—That evening many, many years ago, in his youth, when he had arrived at Berg and heard from Arnvid’s lips how she had tried to drown herself, fly from his forgiveness and his love and his burning desire to raise her up and bear her to a safe place.

He saw Arnvid’s face tonight, as his friend admonished him: you accepted all I was able to give you, you did not break our friendship, therefore you were my best friend. He remembered Torhild—he had not seen her since the day he had had to drive her out of his house, because she bore a child under her heart, and it was his, the married man’s. He had never seen his son—could not make good the disgrace, either to the boy or to his mother. But Torhild had gone without a bitter word, without a complaint of her lot. He guessed that Torhild was so fond of him that she saw it was the last kindness she could do him, to go away uncomplaining—and that it had been her chief consolation in misfortune that she could yet do him a good deed.