He seemed sick and feeble when I parted from him; but joy is a great restorer, and the air of the native land gives quick health to the exile."
"Hark!" said Hilda, "you hear the passing bell for the soul of the son of Ironsides!"
The mournful knell, as she spoke, came dull from the roofs of the city afar, borne to their ears by the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere. Edith crossed herself, and murmured a prayer according to the custom of the age; then raising her eyes to Harold, she murmured, as she clasped her hands:
"Be not saddened, Harold; hope still."
"Hope!" repeated Hilda, rising proudly from her recumbent position, "Hope! in that knell from St. Paul's, dull indeed is thine ear, O Harold, if thou hearest not the joy-bells that inaugurate a future king!"
The Earl started; his eyes shot fire; his breast heaved.
"Leave us, Edith," said Hilda, in a low voice; and after watching her grandchild's slow reluctant steps descend the knoll, she turned to Harold, and leading him towards the gravestone of the Saxon chief, said:
"Rememberest thou the spectre that rose from this mound?--rememberest thou the dream that followed it?"
"The spectre, or deceit of mine eye, I remember well," answered the Earl; "the dream, not;--or only in confused and jarring fragments."
"I told thee then, that I could not unriddle the dream by the light of the moment; and that the dead who slept below never appeared to men, save for some portent of doom to the house of Cerdic. The portent is fulfilled; the Heir of Cerdic is no more. To whom appeared the great Scin-laeca, but to him who shall lead a new race of kings to the Saxon throne!"
Harold breathed hard, and the colour mounted bright and glowing to his cheek and brow.
"I cannot gainsay thee, Vala. Unless, despite all conjecture, Edward should be spared to earth till the Atheling's infant son acquires the age when bearded men will acknowledge a chief [151], I look round in England for the coming king, and all England reflects but mine own image."
His head rose erect as he spoke, and already the brow seemed august, as if circled by the diadem of the Basileus. "And if it be so," he added, "I accept that solemn trust, and England shall grow greater in my greatness."
"The flame breaks at last from the smouldering fuel!" cried the Vala, "and the hour I so long foretold to thee hath come!"
Harold answered not, for high and kindling emotions deafened him to all but the voice of a grand ambition, and the awakening joy of a noble heart.
"And then--and then," he exclaimed, "I shall need no mediator between nature and monkcraft;--then, O Edith, the life thou hast saved will indeed be thine!" He paused, and it was a sign of the change that an ambition long repressed, but now rushing into the vent legitimately open to it, had already begun to work in the character hitherto so self-reliant, when he said in a low voice, "But that dream which hath so long lain locked, not lost, in my mind; that dream of which I recall only vague remembrances of danger yet defiance, trouble yet triumph,--canst thou unriddle it, O Vala, into auguries of success?"
"Harold," answered Hilda, "thou didst hear at the close of thy dream, the music of the hymns that are chaunted at the crowning of a king,-- and a crowned king shalt thou be; yet fearful foes shall assail thee-- foreshown in the shapes of a lion and raven, that came in menace over the bloodred sea. The two stars in the heaven betoken that the day of thy birth was also the birthday of a foe, whose star is fatal to thine; and they warn thee against a battle-field, fought on the day when those stars shall meet. Farther than this the mystery of thy dream escapes from my lore;--wouldst thou learn thyself, from the phantom that sent the dream;--stand by my side at the grave of the Saxon hero, and I will summon the Scin-laeca to counsel the living. For what to the Vala the dead may deny, the soul of the brave on the brave may bestow!"
Harold listened with a serious and musing attention which his pride or his reason had never before accorded to the warnings of Hilda. But his sense was not yet fascinated by the voice of the charmer, and he answered with his wonted smile, so sweet yet so haughty:
"A hand outstretched to a crown should be armed for the foe; and the eye that would guard the living should not be dimmed by the vapours that encircle the dead."
CHAPTER V.
But from that date changes, slight, yet noticeable and important, were at work both in the conduct and character of the great Earl.
Hitherto he had advanced on his career without calculation; and nature, not policy, had achieved his power. But henceforth he began thoughtfully to cement the foundations of his House, to extend the area, to strengthen the props. Policy now mingled with the justice that had made him esteemed, and the generosity that had won him love. Before, though by temper conciliatory, yet, through honesty, indifferent to the enmities he provoked, in his adherence to what his conscience approved, he now laid himself out to propitiate all ancient feuds, soothe all jealousies, and convert foes into friends.