CHAPTER II.
All other thought had given way to Harold's impetuous yearning to
throw himself upon the Church, to hear his doom from the purest and
wisest of its Saxon preachers. Had the prelate deemed his vow
irrefragable, he would have died the Roman's death, rather than live
the traitor's life; and strange indeed was the revolution created in
this man's character, that he, "so self-dependent," he who had
hitherto deemed himself his sole judge below of cause and action, now
felt the whole life of his life committed to the word of a cloistered
shaveling. All other thought had given way to that fiery impulse--
home, mother, Edith, king, power, policy, ambition! Till the weight
was from his soul, he was as an outlaw in his native land. But when
the next sun rose, and that awful burthen was lifted from his heart
and his being--when his own calm sense, returning, sanctioned the fiat
of the priest,--when, though with deep shame and rankling remorse at
the memory of the vow, he yet felt exonerated, not from the guilt of
having made, but the deadlier guilt of fulfilling it--all the objects
of existence resumed their natural interest, softened and chastened,
but still vivid in the heart restored to humanity. But from that
time, Harold's stern philosophy and stoic ethics were shaken to the
dust; re-created, as it were, by the breath of religion, he adopted
its tenets even after the fashion of his age. The secret of his
shame, the error of his conscience, humbled him. Those unlettered
monks whom he had so despised, how had he lost the right to stand
aloof from their control! how had his wisdom, and his strength, and
his courage, met unguarded the hour of temptation!
Yes, might the time come, when England could spare him from her side!
when he, like Sweyn the outlaw, could pass a pilgrim to the Holy
Sepulchre, and there, as the creed of the age taught, win full pardon
for the single lie of his truthful life, and regain the old peace of
his stainless conscience!
There are sometimes event and season in the life of man the hardest
and most rational, when he is driven perforce to faith the most
implicit and submissive; as the storm drives the wings of the petrel
over a measureless sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at refuge,
on the sails of some lonely ship. Seasons when difficulties, against
which reason seems stricken into palsy, leave him bewildered in dismay
--when darkness, which experience cannot pierce, wraps the conscience,
as sudden night wraps the traveller in the desert--when error
entangles his feet in its inextricable web--when, still desirous of
the right, he sees before him but a choice of evil; and the Angel of
the Past, with a flaming sword, closes on him the gates of the Future.
Then, Faith flashes on him, with a light from the cloud. Then, he
clings to Prayer as a drowning wretch to the plank. Then, that solemn
authority which clothes the Priest, as the interpreter between the
soul and the Divinity, seizes on the heart that trembles with terror
and joy; then, that mysterious recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice,
of purifying lustration (mystery which lies hid in the core of all
religions), smoothes the frown on the Past, removes the flaming sword
from the future. The Orestes escapes from the hounding Furies, and
follows the oracle to the spot where the cleansing dews shall descend
on the expiated guilt.
He who hath never known in himself, nor marked in another, such
strange crisis in human fate, cannot judge of the strength and the
weakness it bestows. But till he can so judge, the spiritual part of
all history is to him a blank scroll, a sealed volume. He cannot
comprehend what drove the fierce Heathen, cowering and humbled, into
the fold of the Church; what peopled Egypt with eremites; what lined
the roads of Europe and Asia with pilgrim homicides; what, in the
elder world, while Jove yet reigned on Olympus, is couched in the dim
traditions of the expiation of Apollo, the joy-god, descending into
Hades; or why the sinner went blithe and light-hearted from the
healing lustrations of Eleusis. In all these solemn riddles of the
Jove world and the Christ's is involved the imperious necessity that
man hath of repentance and atonement: through their clouds, as a
rainbow, shines the covenant that reconciles the God and the man.
Now Life with strong arms plucked the reviving Harold to itself.
Already the news of his return had spread through the city, and his
chamber soon swarmed with joyous welcomes and anxious friends. But
the first congratulations over, each had tidings that claimed his
instant attention, to relate. His absence had sufficed to loosen half
the links of that ill-woven empire.
All the North was in arms. Northumbria had revolted as one man, from
the tyrannous cruelty of Tostig; the insurgents had marched upon York;
Tostig had fled in dismay, none as yet knew whither. The sons of
Algar had sallied forth from their Mercian fortresses, and were now in
the ranks of the Northumbrians, who it was rumoured had selected
Morcar (the elder) in the place of Tostig.
Amidst these disasters, the King's health was fast decaying; his mind
seemed bewildered and distraught; dark ravings of evil portent that
had escaped from his lip in his mystic reveries and visions, had
spread abroad, bandied with all natural exaggerations, from lip to
lip. The country was in one state of gloomy and vague apprehension.
But all would go well, now Harold the great Earl--Harold the stout,
and the wise, and the loved--had come back to his native land!
In feeling himself thus necessary to England,--all eyes, all hopes,
all hearts turned to him, and to him alone,--Harold shook the evil
memories from his soul, as a lion shakes the dews from his mane. His
intellect, that seemed to have burned dim and through smoke in scenes
unfamiliar to its exercise, rose at once equal to the occasion. His
words reassured the most despondent. His orders were prompt and
decisive. While, to and fro, went forth his bodes and his riders, he
himself leaped on his horse, and rode fast to Havering.
At length that sweet and lovely retreat broke on his sight, as a bower
through the bloom of a garden. This was Edward's favourite abode: he
had built it himself for his private devotions, allured by its woody
solitudes and gloom of its copious verdure. Here it was said, that
once that night, wandering through the silent glades, and musing on
heaven, the loud song of the nightingales had disturbed his devotions;
with vexed and impatient soul, he had prayed that the music might be
stilled: and since then, never more the nightingale was heard in the
shades of Havering! Threading the woodland, melancholy yet glorious
with the hues of autumn, Harold reached the low and humble gate of the
timber edifice, all covered with creepers and young ivy; and in a few
moments more he stood in the presence of the King.
Edward raised himself with pain from the couch on which he was
reclined [204], beneath a canopy supported by columns and surmounted
by carved symbols of the bell towers of Jerusalem: and his languid
face brightened at the sight of Harold. Behind the King stood a man
with a Danish battle-axe in his hand, the captain of the royal house-
carles, who, on a sign from the King, withdrew.
"Thou art come back, Harold," said Edward then, in a feeble voice; and
the Earl drawing near, was grieved and shocked at the alteration of
his face. "Thou art come back, to aid this benumbed hand, from which
the earthly sceptre is about to fall. Hush! for it is so, and I
rejoice." Then examining Harold's features, yet pale with recent
emotions, and now saddened by sympathy with the King, he resumed:
"Well, man of this world, that went forth confiding in thine own
strength, and in the faith of men of the world like thee,--well, were
my warnings prophetic, or art thou contented with thy mission?"
"Alas!" said Harold, mournfully. "Thy wisdom was greater than mine, O
King; and dread the snares laid for me and our native land, under
pretext of a promise made by thee to Count William, that he should
reign in England, should he be your survivor."
Edward's face grew troubled and embarrassed. "Such promise," he said,
falteringly, "when I knew not the laws of England, nor that a realm
could not pass like house and hyde by a man's single testament, might
well escape from my thoughts, never too bent upon earthly affairs.
But I marvel not that my cousin's mind is more tenacious and mundane.
And verily, in those vague words, and from thy visit, I see the Future
dark with fate and crimson with blood."
Then Edward's eyes grew locked and set, staring into space; and even
that reverie, though it awed him, relieved Harold of much disquietude,
for he rightly conjectured, that on waking from it Edward would press
him no more as to those details, and dilemmas of conscience, of which
he felt that the arch-worshipper of relics was no fitting judge.
When the King, with a heavy sigh, evinced return from the world of
vision, he stretched forth to Harold his wan, transparent hand, and
said:
"Thou seest the ring on this finger; it comes to me from above, a
merciful token to prepare my soul for death. Perchance thou mayest
have heard that once an aged pilgrim stopped me on my way from God's
House, and asked for alms--and I, having nought else on my person to
bestow, drew from my finger a ring, and gave it to him, and the old
man went his way, blessing me."
"I mind me well of thy gentle charity," said the Earl; "for the
pilgrim bruited it abroad as he passed, and much talk was there of
it."
The King smiled faintly. "Now this was years ago. It so chanced this
year, that certain Englishers, on their way from the Holy Land, fell
in with two pilgrims--and these last questioned them much of me. And
one, with face venerable and benign, drew forth a ring and said, 'When
thou reachest England, give thou this to the King's own hand, and say,
by this token, that on Twelfth-Day Eve he shall be with me. For what
he gave to me, will I prepare recompense without bound; and already
the saints deck for the new comer the halls where the worm never gnaws
and the moth never frets.' 'And who,' asked my subjects amazed, 'who
shall we say, speaketh thus to us?' And the pilgrim answered, 'He on
whose breast leaned the Son of God, and my name is John!' [205]
Wherewith the apparition vanished. This is the ring I gave to the
pilgrim; on the fourteenth night from thy parting, miraculously
returned to me. Wherefore, Harold, my time here is brief, and I
rejoice that thy coming delivers me up from the cares of state to the
preparation of my soul for the joyous day."
Harold, suspecting under this incredible mission some wily device of
the Norman, who, by thus warning Edward (of whose precarious health he
was well aware), might induce his timorous conscience to take steps
for the completion of the old promise,--Harold, we say, thus
suspecting, in vain endeavoured to combat the King's presentiments,
but Edward interrupted him, with displeased firmness of look and tone:
"Come not thou, with thy human reasonings, between my soul and the
messenger divine; but rather nerve and prepare thyself for the dire
calamities that lie greeding in the days to come! Be thine, things
temporal. All the land is in rebellion. Anlaf, whom thy coming
dismissed, hath just wearied me with sad tales of bloodshed and
ravage. Go and hear him;--go hear the bodes of thy brother Tostig,
who wait without in our hall;--go, take axe, and take shield, and the
men of earth's war, and do justice and right; and on thy return thou
shalt see with what rapture sublime a Christian King can soar aloft
from his throne! Go!"
More moved, and more softened, than in the former day he had been with
Edward's sincere, if fanatical piety, Harold, turning aside to conceal
his face, said:
"Would, O royal Edward, that my heart, amidst worldly cares, were as
pure and serene as thine! But, at least, what erring mortal may do to
guard this realm, and face the evils thou foreseest in the Far--that
will I do; and perchance, then, in my dying hour, God's pardon and
peace may descend on me!" He spoke, and went.
The accounts he received from Anlaf (a veteran Anglo-Dane), were
indeed more alarming than he had yet heard. Morcar, the bold son of
Algar, was already proclaimed, by the rebels, Earl of Northumbria; the
shires of Nottingham, Derby, and Lincoln, had poured forth their hardy
Dane populations on his behalf. All Mercia was in arms under his
brother Edwin; and many of the Cymrian chiefs had already joined the
ally of the butchered Gryffyth.
Not a moment did the Earl lose in proclaiming the Herr-bann; sheaves
of arrows were splintered, and the fragments, as announcing the War-
Fyrd, were sent from thegn to thegn, and town to town. Fresh
messengers were despatched to Gurth to collect the whole force of his
own earldom, and haste by quick marches to London; and, these
preparations made, Harold returned to the metropolis, and with a heavy
heart sought his mother, as his next care.
Githa was already prepared for his news; for Haco had of his own
accord gone to break the first shock of disappointment. There was in
this youth a noiseless sagacity that seemed ever provident for Harold.
With his sombre, smileless cheek, and gloom of beauty, bowed as if
beneath the weight of some invisible doom, he had already become
linked indissolubly with the Earl's fate, as its angel,--but as its
angel of darkness!
To Harold's intense relief, Githa stretched forth her hands as he
entered, and said, "Thou hast failed me, but against thy will! grieve
not; I am content!"
"Now our Lady be blessed, mother--"
"I have told her," said Haco, who was standing, with arms folded, by
the fire, the blaze of which reddened fitfully his hueless countenance
with its raven hair; "I have told thy mother that Wolnoth loves his
captivity, and enjoys the cage. And the lady hath had comfort in my
words."
"Not in thine only, son of Sweyn, but in those of fate; for before thy
coming I prayed against the long blind yearning of my heart, prayed
that Wolnoth might not cross the sea with his kinsmen."
"How!" exclaimed the Earl, astonished.
Githa took his arm, and led him to the farther end of the ample
chamber, as if out of the hearing of Haco, who turned his face towards
the fire, and gazed into the fierce blaze with musing, unwinking eyes.
"Couldst thou think, Harold, that in thy journey, that on the errand
of so great fear and hope, I could sit brooding in my chair, and count
the stitches on the tremulous hangings? No; day by day have I sought
the lore of Hilda, and at night I have watched with her by the fount,
and the elm, and the tomb; and I know that thou hast gone through dire
peril; the prison, the war, and the snare; and I know also, that his
Fylgia hath saved the life of my Wolnoth; for had he returned to his
native land, he had returned but to a bloody grave!"
"Says Hilda this?" said the Earl, thoughtfully.
"So say the Vala, the rune, and the Scin-laeca! and such is the doom
that now darkens the brow of Haco! Seest thou not that the hand of
death is in the hush of the smileless lip, and the glance of the
unjoyous eye?"
"Nay, it is but the thought born to captive youth, and nurtured in
solitary dreams. Thou hast seen Hilda?--and Edith, my mother? Edith
is--"
"Well," said Githa, kindly, for she sympathised with that love which
Godwin would have condemned, "though she grieved deeply after thy
departure, and would sit for hours gazing into space, and moaning.
But even ere Hilda divined thy safe return, Edith knew it; I was
beside her at the time; she started up, and cried, 'Harold is in
England!'--'How?--Why thinkest thou so?' said I. And Edith answered,
'I feel it by the touch of the earth, by the breath of the air.' This
is more than love, Harold. I knew two twins who had the same instinct
of each other's comings and goings, and were present each to each even
when absent: Edith is twin to my soul. Thou goest to her now, Harold:
thou wilt find there thy sister Thyra. The child hath drooped of
late, and I besought Hilda to revive her, with herb and charm. Thou
wilt come back, ere thou departest to aid Tostig, thy brother, and
tell me how Hilda hath prospered with my ailing child?"
"I will, my mother. Be cheered!--Hilda is a skilful nurse. And now
bless thee, that thou hast not reproached me that my mission failed to
fulfil my promise. Welcome even our kinswoman's sayings, sith they
comfort thee for the loss of thy darling!"
Then Harold left the room, mounted his steed, and rode through the
town towards the bridge. He was compelled to ride slowly through the
streets, for he was recognised; and cheapman and mechanic rushed from
house and from stall to hail the Man of the Land and the Time.
"All is safe now in England, for Harold is come back!" They seemed
joyous as the children of the mariner, when, with wet garments, he
struggles to shore through the storm. And kind and loving were
Harold's looks and brief words, as he rode with vailed bonnet through
the swarming streets.
At length he cleared the town and the bridge; and the yellowing boughs
of the orchards drooped over the road towards the Roman home, when, as
he spurred his steed, he heard behind him hoofs as in pursuit, looked
back, and beheld Haco. He drew rein,--"What wantest thou, my nephew?"
"Thee!" answered Haco, briefly, as he gained his side. "Thy
companionship."
"Thanks, Haco; but I pray thee to stay in my mother's house, for I
would fain ride alone."
"Spurn me not from thee, Harold! This England is to me the land of
the stranger; in thy mother's house I feel but the more the orphan.
Henceforth I have devoted to thee my life! And my life my dead and
dread father hath left to thee, as a doom or a blessing; wherefore
cleave I to thy side;--cleave we in life and in death to each other!"
An undefined and cheerless thrill shot through the Earl's heart as the
youth spoke thus; and the remembrance that Haco's counsel had first
induced him to abandon his natural hardy and gallant manhood, meet
wile by wile, and thus suddenly entangle him in his own meshes, had
already mingled an inexpressible bitterness with his pity and
affection for his brother's son. But, struggling against that uneasy
sentiment, as unjust towards one to whose counsel--however sinister,
and now repented--he probably owed, at least, his safety and
deliverance, he replied gently:
"I accept thy trust and thy love, Haco! Ride with me, then; but
pardon a dull comrade, for when the soul communes with itself the lip
is silent."
"True," said Haco, "and I am no babbler. Three things are ever
silent: Thought, Destiny, and the Grave."
Each then, pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side;
the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual
brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant
hillocks. Alternately through shade and through light rode they on;
the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the
bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile as it rose from
the dank pools that glistened in the western sun.
It was always by the rear of the house, where stood the ruined temple,
so associated with the romance of his life, that Harold approached the
home of the Vala; and as now the hillock, with its melancholy diadem
of stones, came in view, Haco for the first time broke the silence.
"Again--as in a dream!" he said, abruptly. "Hill, ruin, grave-mound--
but where the tall image of the mighty one?"
"Hast thou then seen this spot before?" asked the Earl.
"Yea, as an infant here was I led by my father Sweyn; here too, from
thy house yonder, dim seen through the fading leaves, on the eve
before I left this land for the Norman, here did I wander alone; and
there, by that altar, did the great Vala of the North chaunt her runes
for my future."
"Alas! thou too!" murmured Harold; and then he asked aloud, "What said
she?"
"That thy life and mine crossed each other in the skein; that I should
save thee from a great peril, and share with thee a greater."
"Ah, youth," answered Harold, bitterly, "these vain prophecies of
human wit guard the soul from no anger. They mislead us by riddles
which our hot hearts interpret according to their own desires. Keep
thou fast to youth's simple wisdom, and trust only to the pure spirit
and the watchful God."
He suppressed a groan as he spoke, and springing from his steed, which
he left loose, advanced up the hill. When he had gained the height,
he halted, and made sign to Haco, who had also dismounted, to do the
same. Half way down the side of the slope which faced the ruined
peristyle, Haco beheld a maiden, still young, and of beauty surpassing
all that the court of Normandy boasted of female loveliness. She was
seated on the sward;--while a girl younger, and scarcely indeed grown
into womanhood, reclined at her feet, and leaning her cheek upon her
hand, seemed hushed in listening attention. In the face of the
younger girl Haco recognised Thyra, the last-born of Githa, though he
had but once seen her before--the day ere he left England for the
Norman court--for the face of the girl was but little changed, save
that the eye was more mournful, and the cheek was paler.
And Harold's betrothed was singing, in the still autumn air, to
Harold's sister. The song chosen was on that subject the most popular
with the Saxon poets, the mystic life, death, and resurrection of the
fabled Phoenix, and this rhymeless song, in its old native flow, may
yet find some grace in the modern ear.
THE LAY OF THE PHOENIX. [206]
"Shineth far hence--so
Sing the wise elders
Far to the fire-east
The fairest of lands.
Daintily dight is that
Dearest of joy fields;
Breezes all balmy-filled
Glide through its groves.
There to the blest, ope
The high doors of heaven,
Sweetly sweep earthward
Their wavelets of song.
Frost robes the sward not,
Rusheth no hail-steel;
Wind-cloud ne'er wanders,
Ne'er falleth the rain.
Warding the woodholt,
Girt with gay wonder,
Sheen with the plumy shine,
Phoenix abides.
Lord of the Lleod, [207]
Whose home is the air,
Winters a thousand
Abideth the bird.
Hapless and heavy then
Waxeth the hazy wing;
Year-worn and old in the
Whirl of the earth.
Then the high holt-top,
Mounting, the bird soars;
There, where the winds sleep,
He buildeth a nest;--
Gums the most precious, and
Balms of the sweetest,
Spices and odours, he
Weaves in the nest.
There, in that sun-ark, lo,
Waiteth he wistful;
Summer comes smiling, lo,
Rays smite the pile!
Burden'd with eld-years, and
Weary with slow time,
Slow in his odour-nest
Burneth the bird.
Up from those ashes, then,
Springeth a rare fruit;
Deep in the rare fruit
There coileth a worm.
Weaving bliss-meshes
Around and around it,
Silent and blissful, the
Worm worketh on.
Lo, from the airy web,
Blooming and brightsome,
Young and exulting, the
Phoenix breaks forth.
Round him the birds troop,
Singing and hailing;
Wings of all glories
Engarland the king.
Hymning and hailing,
Through forest and sun-air,
Hymning and hailing,
And speaking him 'King.'
High flies the phoenix,
Escaped from the worm-web
He soars in the sunlight,
He bathes in the dew.
He visits his old haunts,
The holt and the sun-hill;
The founts of his youth, and
The fields of his love.
The stars in the welkin,
The blooms on the earth,
Are glad in his gladness,
Are young in his youth.
While round him the birds troop,
the Hosts of the Himmel, [208]
Blisses of music, and
Glories of wings;
Hymning and hailing,
And filling the sun-air
With music, and glory
And praise of the King."
As the lay ceased, Thyra said:
"Ah, Edith, who would not brave the funeral pyre to live again like
the phoenix!"
"Sweet sister mine," answered Edith, "the singer doth mean to image
out in the phoenix the rising of our Lord, in whom we all live again."
And Thyra said, mournfully:
"But the phoenix sees once more the haunts of his youth--the things
and places dear to him in his life before. Shall we do the same, O
Edith?"
"It is the persons we love that make beautiful the haunts we have
known," answered the betrothed. "Those persons at least we shall
behold again, and whenever they are--there is heaven."
Harold could restrain himself no longer. With one bound he was at
Edith's side, and with one wild cry of joy he clasped her to his
heart.
"I knew that thou wouldst come to-night--I knew it, Harold," murmured
the betrothed.
