"See, child of my heart," said Hilda, addressing Edith, while she still gazed on the western luminary, "see, the sun goes down to the far deeps, where Rana and Aegir [136] watch over the worlds of the sea; but with morning he comes from the halls of the Asas--the golden gates of the East--and joy comes in his train. And yet then thinkest, sad child, whose years have scarce passed into woman, that the sun, once set, never comes back to life. But even while we speak, thy morning draws near, and the dunness of cloud takes the hues of the rose!"
Edith's hand paused from its vague employment, and fell droopingly on her knee;--she turned with an unquiet and anxious eye to Hilda, and after looking some moments wistfully at the Vala, the colour rose to her cheek, and she said in a voice that had an accent half of anger:
"Hilda, thou art cruel!"
"So is Fate!" answered the Vala. "But men call not Fate cruel when it smiles on their desires. Why callest thou Hilda cruel, when she reads in the setting sun the runes of thy coming joy!"
"There is no joy for me," returned Edith, plaintively; and I have that on my heart," she added, with a sudden and almost fierce change of tone, "which at last I will dare to speak. I reproach thee, Hilda, that thou hast marred all my life, that thou hast duped me with dreams, and left me alone in despair."
"Speak on," said Hilda, calmly, as a nurse to a froward child.
"Hast thou not told me, from the first dawn of my wondering reason, that my life and lot were inwoven with--with (the word, mad and daring, must out)--with those of Harold the peerless? But for that, which my infancy took from thy lips as a law, I had never been so vain and so frantic! I had never watched each play of his face, and treasured each word from his lips; I had never made my life but part of his life--all my soul but the shadow of his sun. But for that, I had hailed the calm of the cloister--but for that, I had glided in peace to my grave. And now--now, O Hilda--" Edith paused, and that break had more eloquence than any words she could command. "And," she resumed quickly, "thou knowest that these hopes were but dreams--that the law ever stood between him and me--and that it was guilt to love him."
"I knew the law," answered Hilda, "but the law of fools is to the wise as the cobweb swung over the brake to the wing of the bird. Ye are sibbe to each other, some five times removed; and therefore an old man at Rome saith that ye ought not to wed. When the shavelings obey the old man at home, and put aside their own wives and frillas [137], and abstain from the wine cup, and the chase, and the brawl, I will stoop to hear of their laws,--with disrelish it may be, but without scorn. [138] It is no sin to love Harold; and no monk and no law shall prevent your union on the day appointed to bring ye together, form and heart."
"Hilda! Hilda! madden me not with joy," cried Edith, starting up in rapturous emotion, her young face dyed with blushes, and all her renovated beauty so celestial that Hilda herself was almost awed, as if by the vision of Freya, the northern Venus, charmed by a spell from the halls of Asgard.
"But that day is distant," renewed the Vala.
"What matters! what matters!" cried the pure child of Nature; "I ask but hope. Enough,--oh! enough, if we were but wedded on the borders of the grave!"
"Lo, then," said Hilda, "behold, the sun of thy life dawns again!"
As she spoke, the Vala stretched her arm, and through the intersticed columns of the fane, Edith saw the large shadow of a man cast over the still sward. Presently into the space of the circle came Harold, her beloved. His face was pale with grief yet recent; but, perhaps, more than ever, dignity was in his step and command on his brow, for he felt that now alone with him rested the might of Saxon England. And what royal robe so invests with imperial majesty the form of a man as the grave sense of power responsible, in an earnest soul?
"Thou comest," said Hilda, "in the hour I predicted; at the setting of the sun and the rising of the star."
"Vala," said Harold, gloomily, "I will not oppose my sense to thy prophecies; for who shall judge of that power of which he knows not the elements? or despise the marvel of which he cannot detect the imposture? But leave me, I pray thee, to walk in the broad light of the common day. These hands are made to grapple with things palpable, and these eyes to measure the forms that front my way. In my youth, I turned in despair or disgust from the subtleties of the schoolmen, which split upon hairs the brains of Lombard and Frank; in my busy and stirring manhood entangle me not in the meshes which confuse all my reason, and sicken my waking thoughts into dreams of awe. Mine be the straight path and the plain goal!"
The Vala gazed on him with an earnest look, that partook of admiration, and yet more of gloom; but she spoke not, and Harold resumed:
"Let the dead rest, Hilda,--proud names with glory on earth and shadows escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven.