It was night, and the clouds hung low as if snow might be coming, but the town seemed very light, as with bonfires round about it and rockets shot into the air, and very noisy, too, as with guns fired and music played, so that Jason's watery eyes felt dazzled, and his singing ears were stunned. But he walked on, hardly knowing which way he was going, and hearing only as sounds at sea the voices that called to him from the doors of the drinking-shops, until he came out at the bridge to the Thingvellir road. And there, in the sombre darkness, he was overtaken by the three Danes who had spoken to him before.
"So your courage failed you at the last moment – I watched you and saw how it was. Ah, don't be afraid, we are your friends, and you are one of us. Let us play at hide-and-seek no longer."
"They say he is going down the fiord in search of his wife's father. Take care he does not slip away. Old Jorgen is coming back. Good-night."
So saying, without once turning their faces towards Jason's face, they strode past him with an indifferent air. Then Jason became conscious that Government House was ablaze with lights, that some of its windows were half down, that sounds of music and dancing came from within, and that on the grass plat in front, which was lit by torches men and women in gay costumes were strolling to and fro, in pairs.
And turning from the bridge towards the house he saw a man go by on horseback in the direction of the sea, and remembered in a dull way that just there and at that hour he had seen Michael Sunlocks ride past him in the dusk.
What happened thereafter he never rightly knew, only that in a distempered dream he was standing with others outside the rails about Government House while the snow began to fall through the darkness, that he saw the dancers circling across the lighted windows and heard the music of the flutes and violins above the steady chime of the sea, that he knew this merry-making to be a festival of her marriage whom he loved with a love beyond that of his immortal soul, that the shame of his condition pained him, and the pain of it maddened him, the madness of it swept away his consciousness, and that when he came to himself he had forced his way into the house, thinking to meet his enemy face to face, and was in a room alone with Greeba, who was cowering before him with a white face of dismay.
"Jason," she was saying, "why are you here?"
"Why are
you
here?" he asked.
"Why have you followed me?" she cried.
"Why have you followed
him
?"
"What have you come for?"
"Is
this
what
you
have come for?"
"Jason," she cried again, "I wronged you, that is true, but you forgave me. I asked you to choose for me, and if you had said 'stay,' I should have stayed. But you released me, you know you did. You gave me up to him, and now he is my husband."
"But this man is Michael Sunlocks," said Jason.
"Didn't you know that before?" said Greeba. "Ah, then, I know what you have come for. You have recalled your forgiveness, and have come to punish me for deserting you. But spare me! Oh, spare me! Not for my own sake, but his; for I am his wife now and he loves me very dearly. No, no, not that, but only spare me, Jason," she cried, and crouched at his feet.
"I would not harm a hair of your head, Greeba," he said.
"Then what have you come for?" she said.
"This man is a son of Stephen Orry," he said.
"Then it is for him," she cried, and leaped to her feet. "Ah, now I understand. I have not forgotten the night in Port-y-Vullin."
"Does
he
know of that?" said Jason.
"No."
"Does he know I am here?"
"No."
"Does he know we have met?"
"No."
"Let me see him!"
"Why do you ask to see him?"
"Let me see him."
"But why?" she stammered. "Why see him? It is I who have wronged you."
"That's why I want to see him," said Jason.
She uttered a cry of terror and staggered back. There was an ominous silence, in which it passed through Greeba's mind that all that was happening then had happened before. She could hear Jason's labored breathing and the dull thud of the music through the walls.
"Jason," she cried, "What harm has he ever done you? I alone am guilty before you. If your vengeance must fall on anyone let it fall on me."
"Where is he?" said Jason.
"He is gone," said Greeba.
"Gone?"
"Yes, to find my poor father. The dear old man was wrecked in coming here, and my husband sent men to find him, but they blundered and came back empty-handed, and not a half an hour ago he went off himself."
"Was he riding?" said Jason; but without waiting for an answer he made towards the door.
"Wait! Where are you going?" cried Greeba.
Swift as lightning the thought had flashed though her mind, "What if he should follow him!"
Now the door to the room was a heavy, double-hung door of antique build, and at the next instant she had leaped to it and shot the heavy wooden bar that bolted it.
At that he laid one powerful hand on the bar itself, and wrenched it outward across the leverage of its iron loops, and it cracked and broke, and fell to the ground in splinters.
Then her strong excitement lent the brave girl strength, and her fear for her husband gave her courage, and crying, "Stop, for heaven's sake stop," she put her back to the door, tore up the sleeve of her dress, and thrust her bare right arm through the loops where the bar had been.
"Now," she cried, "you must break my arm after it."
"God forbid," said Jason, and he fell back for a moment at that sight. But, recovering himself, he said, "Greeba, I would not touch your beautiful arm to hurt it; no, not for all the wealth of the world. But I must go, so let me pass."
Still her terror was centred on the thought of Jason's vengeance.
"Jason," she cried, "he is my husband. Only think – my husband."
"Let me pass," said Jason.
"Jason," she cried again, "my husband is everything to me, and I am all in all to him."
"Let me pass," said Jason.
"You intend to follow him. You are seeking him to kill him."
"Let me pass."
"Deny it."
"Let me pass."
"Never," she cried. "Kill
me
if you will, but until you have done so you shall not pass this door. Kill me!"
"Not for my soul's salvation!" said Jason.
"Then give up your wicked purpose. Give it up, give it up."
"Only when
he
shall have given up his life."
"Then I warn you, I will show you no pity, for you have shown none to me."
At that she screamed for help, and presently the faint music ceased, and there was a noise of hurrying feet. Jason stood a moment listening; then he looked towards the window, and saw that it was of one frame, and had no sash that opened. At the next instant he had doubled his arms across his face and dashed through glass and bars.
A minute afterwards the room was full of men and women, and Jason was brought back into it, pale, sprinkled with snow and blood-stained.
"I charge that man with threatening the life of my husband," Greeba cried.
Then it seemed as if twenty strong hands laid hold of Jason at once. But no force was needed, for he stood quiet and silent, and looked like a man who had walked in his sleep, and been suddenly awakened by the sound of Greeba's voice. One glance he gave her of great suffering and proud defiance, and then, guarded on either hand, passed out of the place like a captured lion.
CHAPTER IX.
The Peace Oath
There was short shrift for Red Jason. He was tried by the court nearest the spot, and that was the criminal court over which the Bishop in his civil capacity presided, with nine of his neighbors on the bench beside him. From this court an appeal was possible to the Court of the Quarter, and again from the Quarter Court to the High Court of Althing; but appeal in this case there was none, for there was no defence. And because Icelandic law did not allow of the imprisonment of a criminal until after he had been sentenced, an inquest was called forthwith, lest Jason should escape or compass the crime he had attempted. So the Court of Inquiry sat the same night in the wooden shed that served both for Senate and House of Justice.
The snow was now falling heavily, and the hour was late, but the courthouse was thronged. It was a little place – a plain box, bare, featureless, and chill, with walls, roof and seats of wood, and floor of hard earth. Four short benches were raised, step above step, against the farthest side, and on the highest of these the Bishop sat, with three of his colleagues on each of the three rows beneath him. The prisoner stood on a broad stool to the right, and the witnesses on a like stool to the left. A wooden bar crossed the room about midway, and in the open space between that and the door the spectators were crowded together. The place was lighted by candles, and some were fixed to the walls, others were held by ushers on the end of long sticks, and a few were hung to the roof rafters by hemp ropes tied about their middle. The floor ran like a stream, and the atmosphere was full of the vapor of the snow that was melting on the people's clothes. Nothing could be ruder than the courthouse, but the Court that sat there observed a rule of procedure that was almost an idolatry of form.
The prisoner was called by the name of Jason, son of Stephen Orry, and having answered in a voice so hollow that it seemed to come out of the earth beneath him, he rose to his place. His attitude was dull and impassive, and he seemed hardly to see the restless crowd that murmured at sight of him. His tall figure stooped, there was a cloud on his strong brow, and a slow fire in his bloodshot eyes, and his red hair, long as a woman's, hung in disordered masses down his worn cheeks to his shoulders. The Bishop, a venerable prelate of great age, looked at him and thought, "That man's heart is dead within him."
The spokesman of the Court was a middle-aged man, who was short, had little piercing eyes, a square brush of iron-gray hair that stood erect across the top of his corded forehead, and a crisp, clear utterance, like the crackle of a horse's hoofs on the frost.
Jason was charged with an attempt to take the life of Michael Sunlocks, first President of the second Republic. He did not plead and had no defence, and the witnesses against him spoke only in answer to the leading questions of the judges.
The first of the witnesses was Greeba herself, and her evidence, given in English, was required to be interpreted. All her brave strength was now gone. She trembled visibly. Her eyes were down, her head was bent, her face was half-hidden by the hood of a cloak she wore, and her tones were barely audible. She had little to say. The prisoner had forced his way into Government House, and there, to her own face, had threatened to take the life of her husband. In plain words he had done so, and then made show of going in pursuit of her husband that he might carry out his design.
"Wait," said the Bishop, "your husband was not present?"
"No," said Greeba.
"There was, therefore, no direct violence?"
"None."
"And the whole sum of the prisoner's offence, so far as you know of it, lies in the use of the words that you have repeated?"
"Yes."
Then, turning to the spokesman of the Court, the old Bishop said —
"There has been no overt act. This is not an attempt, but a threat to take life. And this is not a crime by the law of this, or any other Christian country."
"Your pardon, my lord," said the little man, in his crisp tones. "I will show that the prisoner is guilty of the essential part of murder itself. Murder, my lord," he added, "is not merely to compass the destruction of a life, for there is homicide, by misadventure, there is justifiable homicide, and there are the rights, long recognized by Icelandic law, of the avengers of blood. Murder is to kill in secrecy and after long-harbored malice, and now my lord, I shall show that the prisoner has lain in wait to slay the President of the Republic."
At that Greeba stood down, and other witnesses followed her. Nearly everyone had been summoned with whom Jason had exchanged words since he landed eight days before. There was the lean student who had told him of the drill at the Latin school, the little tailor who had explained the work at the jail, the stuttering doorkeeper at the senate-house, and one of the masons at the fort. Much was made of the fainting in the Cathedral yard, on the Sunday morning, and out of the deaf landlady, the Cathedral caretaker, some startling disclosures seemed to be drawn.
"Still," said the old Bishop, "I see no overt act."
"Good gracious, my lord," said the little spokesman, "are we to wait until the knife itself has been reddened?"
"God forbid!" said the old Bishop.
Then came two witnesses to prove motive. The first of them was the tipsy comrade of former days, who had drawn Jason into the drinking-shop. He could say of his own knowledge that Jason was jealous of the new Governor. The two were brothers in a sort of way. So people said, and so Jason had told him. They had the same father, but different mothers. Jason's mother had been the daughter of the old Governor, who turned his back on her at her marriage. At her death he relented, and tried to find Jason, but could not, and then took up with Michael Sunlocks. People said that was the beginning of the new President's fortune. At all events Jason thought he had been supplanted, was very wroth, and swore he would be revenged.
The second of the two witnesses pointed to a very different motive. He was one of the three Danes who had twice spoken to Jason – the elderly man with the meek and quiet manner. Though himself loyal to the Icelandic Republic he had been much thrown among its enemies. Jason was one of them; he came here as a spy direct from Copenhagen, and his constant associates were Thomsen, an old, white-headed man living in the High Street, and Polvesen, a young and sallow man, who kept one of the stores facing the sea. With these two Jason had been heard by him to plan the assassination of the President.
At this evidence there was a deep murmur among the people, and it was seen that Greeba had risen again to her feet. Her heart burned and stormed within her. She tried to speak but could not. At the same moment Jason turned his bloodshot eyes in her direction, and then her limbs gave way under her, and she sank back with a moan. The Court misread her emotion, and she was removed. Jason's red eyes followed her constantly.
"This is a case for the Warning, not for punishment," said the Bishop. "It is plainly written in our old Law Book that if a man threaten to slay another man he shall be warned of the gravity of the crime he contemplates and of the penalty attaching to it."
"Gracious heavens, my lord," cried the little spokesman, "what reason have we to assume that this prisoner is ignorant of either? With a life to guard that is prized by friends and precious to the State shall we let this man go free who had sworn before witnesses to destroy it?"
"God forefend!" said the Bishop.
It was lawful to question the prisoner, and so he was questioned.
"Is it true that you have been lying in wait to kill the President?" asked the spokesman.
But Jason made no answer.
"Is it true that you have done so from a desire for personal vengeance?"
No answer.
"Or from political motives?"
No answer.
"Or both?"
Still no answer.
Then the spokesman turned back to the Court. "The stubborn persistence of the prisoner is easy to understand," he said, and smiled.
"Wait," said the old Bishop, and he turned towards Jason.
"Have you any valid plea?"
But Jason gave no sign.
"Listen," said the Bishop. "Though the man who compasses the destruction of a single life is as though he had destroyed a world, for the posterity of him who is dead might have filled a world, yet have all laws of men since the Pentateuch recognized certain conditions that limit the gravity of the crime. If the man who is slain has himself slain the near kindred of his slayer, though the law of Iceland would no longer hold him guiltless, as in the ancient times when evil for evil was the rule and sentence, neither would it punish him as a murderer, who must eat the bread and drink the water of misery all his days. Now what is true of murder must be true of intent to murder, and though I am loth to believe it possible in this instance, honoring and loving as we all do that good man whom you are charged with lying in wait to kill, yet in my duty must I ask you the question – Has Michael Sunlocks spilled blood of your blood, and is it as a redeemer of blood that you go about to slay him?"
There was a dead hush in the little crowded courthouse as Jason lifted his heavy, bloodshot eyes to the Bishop's face and answered, in a weary voice, "I have nothing to say."
Then an aged Lutheran priest, who had sat within the rail, with a snuffbox in his hand and a red print handkerchief across his knee, hobbled up to the witness stool and tendered evidence. He could throw light on the prisoner's hatred of the President, if it was true that the President was a son of Stephen Orry. He knew the prisoner, and had named him in his baptism. He had known the prisoner's mother also, and had sat with her at her death. It was quite true that she was a daughter of the late Governor, and had been badly treated by her father. But she had been yet more badly treated by her husband, who married again while she was still alive, and had another son by the other wife. On her deathbed she had heard of this, and told the prisoner, who then and there, this witness being present, made an awful vow of vengeance upon his father and his father's son.
The old priest was heard in silence, and his words sent a quiver through the courthouse. Even Jason, who had shown no interest save when Greeba was removed, lifted up his bloodshot eyes again and listened.
And the Bishop, visibly moved, turned to the Court and said, "Let us put this prisoner back to be tried by the High Court and the Lagmann."
"What, my lord!" cried the little spokesman, with a lofty look, "and set him at liberty in the meantime, to carry out the crime he threatens?"
"Heaven forbid!" said the Bishop.
"Remember, until he has been condemned we have no power to hold him," said the spokesman.
The Bishop turned to an usher and said, "Bring me the Statute Book," and the great tome was brought. The Bishop opened it and again turned to the prisoner. "The Almighty," said he, "created one man at the beginning to teach us that all men are brethren, and the law of our old country provides that when two have had disputes and pursued each other on account of hatred, even as brethren they shall make peace before their neighbors. Now listen to the words I shall read to you, and be ready to say if you will swear to them."
Then a great silence fell upon the people, while in solemn tones the old Bishop read the Peace Oath.
"Ye two shall be set at one and live friendly together, at meat and at drink, in the Althing and at meetings, at kirk prayers and in King's palace; and in whatever place else men meet together, there shall ye be so set at one, as if this quarrel had never come between you. Ye shall share knife and meat together, and all things besides, as friends and not as enemies."
The Bishop paused and looked over his spectacles at Jason, who stood as before, with the cloud on his brow and the slow fire in his deep eyes, but with no sign of feeling or interest.
"Will you promise to swear to this, when he shall have returned who should swear to it with you?" said the Bishop.
Then all eyes turned towards Jason, and there came across his face at that moment the look of a bated dog.
"No," he growled.
The spokesman shifted in his seat and the people grew restless.
"Listen again," said the Bishop, and his long white beard shook and his solemn voice rose to a shrill cry as he twisted back to the book and read: —
"But if one of you be so mad that he breaks this truce thus made, and slays after pledges have been made and his blade has reddened, he shall be an outlaw, accursed and driven away, so far as men drive wolves farthest away. He shall be banished of God and all good Christian men, as far as Christian men seek churches, as mothers bring forth sons, son calls mother, flames blaze up, mankind kindle fire, earth is green, sun shines, and snow covers the ground; he shall flee from kirk and Christian men, God's house and mankind, and from every home save hell."
Then there was a pause and a great hush, and the Bishop lifted his eyes from the book, and said —
"Will you swear to it?"
Again all eyes turned towards Jason, and again his face, which had been impassive, took the look of a bated dog.
"No, no, no!" he cried in a loud voice, and then the great silence was broken by deep murmurs.
"It is useless," said the spokesman. "Warnings and peace oaths, though still valid, are the machinery of another age. This prisoner is not ignorant of the gravity of the crime he contemplates, nor yet of the penalty attaching to it."
There was an audible murmur of assent from the people.
"That's true," said one. "It's the truest word spoken to-night," said another. "The old man is all for mercy," said a third. "It isn't safe," said a fourth. And there was other whispering, and much nodding of heads and shuffling of feet.
Encouraged by these comments the little spokesman added —
"In any other country at this age of the world a man who tacitly admitted a design to take life would be promptly clapped into prison."
"Ay, ay," the people muttered, but the Bishop drew himself up and said, "In any other country a criminal who showed no fear of the death that hung over him would be straightway consigned to a madhouse."
"We have no madhouse in this island, my lord," said the little spokesman, "save the Sulpher Mines, and there he must go."
"Wait," said the Bishop, and once again he turned to the prisoner. "If this Court should agree to ship you out of Iceland will you promise never more to return to it?"
For the third time all eyes were turned on Jason, but he did not seem to hear the Bishop's question.
"Will you promise?" said the Bishop again.
"No," said Jason.
"Dangerous trifling," said the spokesman. "When you seize a mad dog you strangle it."
"Ay, ay," cried many voices at once, and great excitement prevailed.
The old Bishop drew back with a sigh of relief. He loved Michael Sunlocks and had been eager to save him. He pitied Greeba, and for her sake also had been anxious to protect her husband. But from the moment he saw Jason and thought, "That man's heart is dead within him," his love had struggled with his sense of duty. As the trial went on he had remembered Jason and recalled his bitter history, and seized with a strong sympathy he had strained every nerve to keep back his punishment. He had done all he could do, he had nothing to reproach himself with, and full of a deep and secret joy at the certainty of the safety of Sunlocks, he now fell back that the law might take its course.
The Court was counted out, and then the Bishop turned for the last time to Jason, and delivered judgment. "The sentence of this Court," he said "is that you be removed from here to the Sulpher Mines, and be kept there six months certain, and as long thereafter as you refuse to take the Oath of Peace pledging yourself forever, as long as you live or the world endures, to be at one with your enemy as brothers before all men living."
Now Greeba alone knew the truth about Jason. When she had fled from Mann without word or warning it had not been out of fear of him, but of her brothers. Her meeting with Michael Sunlocks, her short stay with the good old Bishop Petersen, her marriage and the festival that followed, had passed her by like a dream. Then came the first short parting with Sunlocks when he had said, "I must leave you for a fortnight, for the men I sent in search of your father have blundered and returned without him." She had cried a little at that, and he had kissed her, and made a brave show of his courage, though she could see the tears in his own big shining eyes. But it was all a dream, a sweet and happy dream, and only by the coming of Jason had the dream been broken.
Then followed her terror, her plea, her fear for her husband's life, her defiance of Jason, and the charge she made against him.
And the first burst of her passion over, she had thought to herself, "My husband is safe, but Jason will now tell all and I shall be a lost and ruined woman," for nothing had she yet said to Michael Sunlocks concerning the man who had wooed and won and released her during the long years of his silence and her trouble. "He will hear the story now," she thought, "and not from my lips but from Jason's."
Being then so far immersed she could not but go on, and so she had allowed herself to be led to the courthouse. No one there had thought to ask her if she had known anything of Jason before that day, and she on her part had said nothing of knowing him. But when Jason had looked at her with eyes of reproach that seemed to go through her soul, he seemed to be saying, "This is but half the truth. Dare you not tell the rest?"
Then listening to the lying of other witnesses, and looking up at Jason's face, so full of pain, and seeing how silent he was under cruel perjury, she remembered that this man's worst crime had been his love of her, and so she staggered to her feet to confess everything.
When she came to herself after that, she was back in her own home – her new home, the home of her happy dream, her husband's home and hers, and there her first fear returned to her. "He will tell all," she thought, "and evil tongues will make it worse, and shame will fall upon my husband, and I shall be lost, lost, lost."
She waited with feverish impatience for the coming of the Bishop to tell her the result of the trial, and at length he came.
"What have they done with him?" she cried; and he told her.
"What defence did he make?" she asked.
"None," said the Bishop.
"What did he say?" she asked again.
"Not a word but 'No,'" said the Bishop.
Then she drew a long breath of immense relief, and at the next instant she reproached herself. How little of soul she had been! And how great of heart had been Jason! He could have wrecked her life with a word, but he had held his peace. She had sent him to prison, and rather than smite he had suffered himself to be smitten. She felt herself small and mean.
And the Bishop, having, as he thought, banished Greeba's terror, hobbled to the door, for now the hour was very late, and the snow was still falling.
"The poor soul will do your good husband no mischief now. Poor lad! poor lad! After all, he is more fit for a madhouse than for a prison. Good-night, my child, good-night."
And so the good old man went his way.
It was intended that Jason should start for the Sulphur Mines on the following day, and he was lodged over night in a little house of detention that stood on the south of the High Street. But the snow continued to fall the whole night through, and in the morning the roads were impassable. Then it was decided to postpone the