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"Then Jason fell on the guards with his bare hands only"



HALL CAINE'S BEST BOOKS

IN THREE VOLUMES



The Bondman

The Blind Mother

The Last Confession



HALL CAINE



P. F. COLLIER & SON

NEW YORK




NOTE

THE central date of this story (a Saga in the only sense
accepted among Icelanders) is 1800, when Iceland, in the same
year as Ireland, lost the last visible sign of her ancient indepen-
dence as a nation. But, lest the historical incidents that stand
as a background to simple human passions should seem to clash at
some points, I hasten to say that I have not thought it wise to bind
myself to the strict chronology of history, Manx or Icelandic, for
some years before and after. I am partly conscious that the Ice-
land I have described is the Iceland of an earlier era ; but Icelanders
will not object to my having tried to bring within my too narrow
limits much of what is beautiful and noble and firing to enthusiasm
in their old habits, customs, and laws. To the foolish revolt which
occurred at Reykjavik early in this century I have tried to give the
dignity of a serious revolution such as, I truly think, Icelanders
may yet make in order to become masters in their own house. For
a great deal of my data toward this sort of secondary interest I
am indebted to many books, Icelandic and English; and for some
personal help I owe my thanks to Herra Jon A. Hjaltalin of Mod-
ruvellir, who is not, however, to be charged with my mistakes
too numerous, I have no doubt. For my descriptions of Icelandic
scenes and character I can claim no authority but that of my
own observation. H. C.

HAWTHORNS,
KESWICK.



Vol. II.



2136S32



THE BONDMAN

"VENGEANCE is MINE i WILL REPAY"
PROEM

THERE is a beautiful Northern legend of a man who loved a
good fairy, and wooed her and won her for his wife, and then
found that she was no more than a woman after all. Grown
weary, he turned his back upon her and wandered away over the
mountains; and there, on the other side of a ravine from where
he was, he saw, as he thought, another fairy, who was lovely to
look upon and played sweet music and sang a sweet song. Then
his heart was filled with joy and bitterness, and he cried, "Oh, that
the gods had given me this one to wife and not the other." At that,
with mighty effort and in great peril, he crossed the ravine and
made toward the fairy, and she fled from him; but he ran and
followed her and overtook her and captured her and turned her
face to his face that he might kiss her, and to! she was his wife!

This old folk-tale is half my story the play of emotions as
sweet and light as the footsteps of the shadows that flit over a
field of corn.

There is another Northern legend of a man who thought he was
pursued by a troll. His ricks were fired, his barns unroofed, his
cattle destroyed, his lands blasted, and his first-born slain. So he
lay in wait for the monster where it lived in the chasms near his
house, and in the darkness of night he saw it. With a cry he
rushed upon it, and gripped it about the waist, and it turned upon
him and held him by the shoulder. Long he wrestled with it, reel-
ing, staggering, falling and rising again; but at length a flood of
strength came to him and he overthrew it, and stood over it, cov-
ering it, conquering it, with its back across his thigh and his right
hand set hard at its throat. Then he drew his knife to kill it, and
the moon shot through a rack of cloud, opening an alley of light
about it, and he saw its face, and lo! the face of the troll was
his own!

This is the other half of my story the crash of passions as
bracing as a black thunderstorm.

(3)



4 THE BONDMAN

CHAPTER I

STEPHEN ORRY, SEAMAN, OF STAPPEN

IN the latter years of last century, H. Jorgen Jorgensen was
Governor-General of Iceland. He was a Dane, born in Copen-
hagen, apprenticed to the sea on board an English trader, after-
ward employed as a petty officer in the British navy, and some
time in the command of a Danish privateer in an alliance of Den-
mark and France against England. A rover, a schemer, a shrewd
man of affairs, who was honest by way of interest, just by policy,
generous by strategy, and who never suffered his conscience, which
was not a good one, to get the better of him.

In one of his adventures he had sailed a Welsh brig from Liver-
pool to Reykjavik. This had been his introduction to the Icelandic
capital, then a little, hungry, creeping settlement, with its face
toward America and its wooden feet in the sea. It had also been
his introduction to the household of the Welsh merchant, who had
a wharf by the old Canning basin at Liverpool, a counting-house
behind his residence in Wolstenholme Square, and a daughter of
five and twenty. Jorgen, by his own proposal, was to barter En-
glish produce for Icelandic tallow. On his first voyage he took
out a hundred tons of salt, and brought back a heavy cargo of lava
for ballast. On his second voyage he took out the Welshman's
daughter as his wife, and did not again trouble to send home an
empty ship.

He had learned that mischief was once more brewing between
England and Denmark, had violated his English letters of marque
and run into Copenhagen, induced the authorities there, on the
strength of his knowledge of English affairs, to appoint him to the
Governor-Generalship of Iceland (then vacant) at a salary of four
hundred pounds a year, and landed at Reykjavik with the Icelandic
flag, of the white falcon on the blue ground the banner of the
Vikings at the masthead of his father-in-law's Welsh brig.

Jorgen Jorgensen was then in his early manhood, and the
strong heart of the good man did not decline with years, but rode
it out with him through life and death. He had always intended
to have a son and build up a family. It was the sole failure of his
career that he had only a daughter. That had been a disaster for
which he was not accountable, but he prepared himself to make
a good end of a bad beginning. With God's assistance and his
own extreme labor he meant to marry his daughter to Count Trol-



THE BONDMAN 5

lop, the Danish Minister for Iceland, a functionary with five hun-
dred a year, a house at Reykjavik, and another at the Danish
capital.

This person was five-and-forty, tall, wrinkled, powdered, oiled,
and devoted to gallantry. Jorgen's daughter, resembling her
Welsh mother, was patient in suffering, passionate in love, and
fierce in hatred. Her name was Rachel. At the advent of Count
Trollop she was twenty, and her mother had then been some years
dead.

The Count perceived Jorgen's drift, smiled at it, silently ac-
quiesced in it, took even a languid interest in it, arising partly out
of the Governor's position and the wealth the honest man was
supposed to have amassed in the rigorous exercise of a place of
power, and partly out of the daughter's own comeliness, which
was not to be despised. At first the girl, on her part, neither as-
sisted her father's designs nor resisted them, but showed complete
indifference to the weighty questions of whom she should marry,
when she should marry, and how she should marry ; and this mood
of mind contented her down to the last week in June that followed
the anniversary of her twenty-first birthday.

That was the month of Althing, the national holiday of four-
teen days, when the people's law-givers the Governor, the Bishop,
the Speaker, and the Sheriffs met the people's delegates and
some portion of the people themselves at the ancient Mount of
Laws in the valley of Thingvellir, for the reading of the old
statutes and the promulgation of the new ones, for the trial of
felons and the settlement of claims, for the making of love and the
making of quarrels, for wrestling and horse-fighting, for the prac-
tise of arms and the breaking of heads. Count Trollop was in
Iceland at this celebration of the ancient festival, and he was in-
duced by Jorgen to give it the light of his countenance. The Gov-
ernor's company set out on half-a-hundred of the native ponies,
and his daughter rode between himself and the Count. During
that ride of six or seven long Danish miles Jorgen settled the terms
of the intended transfer to his own complete contentment. The
Count acquiesced and the daughter did not rebel.

The lonely valley was reached, the tents were pitched, the Bishop
hallowed the assembly with solemn ceremonies, and the business
of Althing began. Three days the work went on, and Rachel
wearied of it; but on the fourth the wrestling was started, and her
father sent for her to sit with him on the Mount and to present
at the end of the contest the silver-buckled belt to the champion of
all Iceland. She obeyed the summons with indifference, and took



6 THE BONDMAN

a seat beside the Judge, with the Count standing at her side. In
the space below there was a crowd of men and boys, women and
children, gathered about the ring. One wrestler was throwing
every one that came before him. His name was Patricksen, and he
was supposed to be descended from the Irish, who settled, years
ago, on the Westmann islands. His success became monotonous;
at every fresh bout his self-confidence grew more insufferable, and
the girl's eyes wandered from the spectacle to the spectators. From
that instant her indifference fell away.

By the outskirts of the crowd, on one of the lower mounds of
the Mount of Laws, a man sat with his head in his hand, with
elbow on his knee. His head was bare, and from his hairy breast
his woolen shirt was thrown back by reason of the heat. He was
a magnificent creature young, stalwart, fair-haired, broad-chested,
with limbs like the beech tree, and muscles like its great gnarled
round heads. His coat, a sort of sailor's jacket, was coarse and
torn; his stockings, reaching to his knees, were cut and brown.
He did not seem to heed the wrestling, and there rested upon him
the idle air of the lusty Icelander the languor of the big, tired
animal. Only, when at the close of a bout a cheer rose and a way
was made through the crowd for the exit of the vanquished man,
did he lift up his great slow eyes gray as those of a seal, and as
calm and lustreless.

The wrestling came to an end. Patricksen justified his Irish
blood, was proclaimed the winner, and stepped up to the foot of
the Mount that the daughter of the Governor might buckle about
him his champion's belt. The girl went through her function
listlessly, her eyes wandering to where the fair-haired giant sat
apart. Then the Westmann islander called for drink that he might
treat the losing men, and having drunk himself, he began to swag-
ger afresh, saying that they might find him the strongest and lus-
tiest man that day at Thingvellir, and he would bargain to throw
him over his back. As he spoke he strutted by the bottom of the
Mount, and the man who sat there lifted his head and looked at
him. Something in the glance arrested Patricksen and he stopped.

"This seems to be a lump of a lad," he said. "Let us see what
we can do with him."

And at that he threw his long arms about the stalwart fellow,
squared his broad hips before him, thrust down his head into his
breast until his red neck was as thick as a bullock's, and threw all
the strength of his body into his arms that he might lift the man out
of his seat. But he moved him not an inch. With feet that held
the earth like the hoofs of an ox, the young man sat unmoved.



THE BONDMAN 7

Then those who had followed at the islander's heels for the
liquor he was spending first stared in wonderment at his failure,
and next laughed in derision of his bragging, and shouted to know
why, before it was too late, the young man had not taken a bout
at the wrestling, for that he who could hold his seat so must be
the strongest-limbed man between the fells and the sea. Hearing
this Patricksen tossed his head in anger, and said it was not yet
too late, that if he took home the champion's belt it should be
no rude bargain to master or man from sea to sea, and buckled
though it was, it should be his who could take it from its place.

At that word the young fellow rose, and then it was seen that
his right arm was useless, being broken between the elbow and
the wrist, and bound with a kerchief above the wound. Nothing
loth for this infirmity, he threw his other arm about the waist of the
islander, and the two men closed for a fall. Patricksen had the
first grip, and he swung to it, thinking straightway to lay his ad-
versary by the heels ; but the young man held his feet, and then,
pushing one leg between the legs of the islander, planting the other
knee into the islander's stomach, thrusting his head beneath the
islander's chin, he knuckled his left hand under the islander's rib,
pulled toward him, pushed from him, threw the weight of his
body forward, and like a green withe Patricksen doubled backward
with a groan. Then at a rush of the islander's kinsmen, and a cry
that his back would be broken, the young man loosed his grip, and
Patricksen rolled from him to the earth, as a clod rolls from the
plowshare.

All this time Jorgen's daughter had craned her neck to see over
the heads of the people, and when the tussle was at an end, her
face, which had been strained to the point of anguish, relaxed to
smiles, and she turned to her father and asked if the champion's
belt should not be his who had overcome the champion. But Jor-
gen answered no that the contest was done, and judgment made,
and he who would take the champion's belt must come to the next
Althing and earn it. Then the girl unlocked her necklace of coral
and silver spangles, beckoned the young man to her, bound the
necklace about his broken arm close up by the shoulder, and asked
him his name.

"Stephen," he answered.

"Whose son?" said she.

"Orrysen but they call me Stephen Orry."

"Of what craft?""

"Seaman, of Stappen, under Snaefell."

The V/estmann islander had rolled to his legs by this time, and



8 THE BONDMAN

now he came shambling up, with the belt in his hand and his
sullen eyes on the ground.

"Keep it," he said, and flung the belt at the girl's feet, between
her and his adversary. Then he strode away through the people,
with curses on his white lips and the veins of his squat forehead
large and dark.

It was midnight before the crowds had broken up and straggled
away to their tents, but the sun of this northern land was still half
over the horizon, and its dull red glow was on the waters of the
lake that lay to the west of the valley. In the dim light of an hour
later, when the hills of Thingvellir slept under the cloud shadow
that was their only night, Stephen Orry stood with the Governor's
daughter by the door of the Thingvellir parsonage, for Jorgen's
company were the parson's guests. He held out the champion's
belt to her and said, "Take it back, for if I keep it the man and his
kinsmen will follow me all the days of my life."

She answered him that it was his, for he had won it, and until
it was taken from him he must hold it, and if he stood in peril
from the kinsmen of any man let him remember that it was she,
daughter of the Governor himself, who had given it. The air was
hushed in that still hour, not a twig or a blade rustling over the
serried face of that desolate land as far as the wooded rifts that
stood under the snowy dome of the Arman fells. As she spoke
there was a sharp noise near at hand, and he started; but she
rallied him on his fears, and laughed that one who had felled the
blustering champion of that day should tremble at a noise in the
night.

There was a wild outcry in Thingvellir next morning. Patrick-
sen, the Westmann islander, had been murdered. There was a
rush of the people to the place where his body had been found. It
lay like a rag across the dike that ran between the parsonage and
the church. On the dead man's face was the look that all had seen
there when last night he flung down the belt between his adversary
and the Governor's daughter, crying, "Keep it." But his sullen
eyes were glazed, and stared up without the quivering of a lid
through the rosy sunlight; the dark veins on his brow were now
purple, and when they lifted him they saw that his back was broken.

Then there was a gathering at the foot of the Mount, with the
parson for judge, and nine men of those who had slept in the tents
nearest to the body for witnesses and jury. Nothing: was dis-
covered. No one had heard a sound throughout the night. There
was no charge to put before the law-givers at Althing. The kins-
men of the dead man cast dark looks at Stephen Orry, but he gave



THE BONDMAN p

never a sign. Next day the strong man was laid under the shallow
turf of the Church garth. His little life's swaggering was swag-
gered out; he must sleep on to the resurrection without one brag
more.

The Governor's daughter did not leave the guest room of the
parsonage from the night of the wrestling onward to the last morn-
ing of the Althing holiday, and then, the last ceremonies done, the
tents struck and the ponies saddled, she took her place between
Jorgen and the Count for the return journey home. Twenty paces
behind her the fair-haired Stephen Orry rode on his shaggy pony,
gaunt and peaky and bearded as a goat, and five paces behind him
rode the brother of the dead man Patricksen. Amid five hundred
men and women, and eight hundred horses saddled for riding or
packed with burdens, these three had set their faces toward the
little wooden capital. "

July passed into August, and the day was near that had been
appointed by Jorgen Jorgensen for the marriage of his daughter to
the Count Trollop. At the girl's request the marriage was post-
poned. The second day came nigh ; again the girl excused herself,
and again the marriage was put off. A third time the appointed
day approached, and a third time the girl asked for delay. But
Jorgen's iron will was to be tampered with no longer. The time
was near when the Minister must return to Copenhagen, and that
was reason enough why the thing in hand should be despatched.
The marriage must be delayed no longer.

But then the Count betrayed reluctance. Rumor had pestered
him with reports that vexed his pride. He dropped hints of them to
the Governor. "Strange," said he, "that a woman should prefer
the stink of the fulmar fish to the perfumes of civilization." Jorgen
fired up at the sneer. His daughter was his daughter, and he was
Governor-General of the island. What low-born churl would dare
to lift his eyes to the child of Jorgen Jorgensen?

The Count had his answer pat. He had made inquiries. The
man's name was Stephen Orry. He came from Stappen under
Snaefell, and was known there for a wastrel. On the poor glory
of his village voyage as an athlete, he idled his days in bed and his
nights at the tavern. His father, an honest thrall, was dead; his
mother lived by splitting and drying the stock-fish for English
traders. He was the foolish old woman's pride, and she kept him.
Such was the man whom the daughter of the Governor had chosen
before the Minister for Iceland.

At that Jorgen's hard face grew livid and white by turns. They
were sitting at supper in Government House, and, with an oath, the



,0 THE BONDMAN

Governor brought his fist down on the table. It was a lie; his
daughter knew no more of the man than he did. The Count
shrugged his shoulders and asked where she was then, that she was
not with them. Jorgen answered, with an absent look, that she
was forced to keep her room.

At that moment a message came for the Count. It was urgent,
and could not wait. The Count went to the door, and, returning
presently, asked if Jorgen was sure that his daughter was in the
house. Certain of it he was, for she was ill, and the days were
deepening to winter. But for all his assurance, Jorgen sprang up
from his seat and made for his daughter's chamber. She was not
there, and the room was empty. The Count met him in the cor-
ridor. "Follow me," he whispered, and Jorgen followed, his
proud, stern head bent low.

In the rear of the Government House at Reykjavik there is
a small meadow. That night it was inches deep in the year's first
fall of snow, but two persons stood together there, close locked in
each other's arms Stephen Orry and the daughter of Jorgen Jor-
gensen.

With the tread of a cat a man crept up behind them. It was
the brother of Patricksen. At his back came the Count and the
Governor. The snow cloud lifted, and a white gush of moon-
light showed all. With the cry of a wild beast Jorgen flung himself
between his daughter and her lover, leapt at Stephen and struck
him hard on the breast, and then, as the girl dropped to her knees
at his feet, he cursed her.

"Bastard," he shrieked, "there's no blood of mine in your body.
Go to your filthy offal, and may the devil damn you both."

She stopped her ears to shut out the torrent of a father's curse,
but before the flood of it was spent she fell backward cold and
senseless, and her upturned face was whiter than the snow. Then
her giant lover lifted her in his arms as if she had been a child, and
strode away in silence.



CHAPTER II

THE MOTHER OF A MAN

THE daughter of the Governor-General and the seaman of
Stappen were made man and wife. The little Lutheran priest, who
married them, Sigfus Thomson, a worthy man and a good Chris-
tian, had reason to remember the ceremony. Within a week he
was removed from his chaplaincy at the capital to the rectory of



THE BONDMAN n

Grimsey, the smallest cure of the Icelandic Church, on an island
separated from the mainland by seven Danish miles of sea.

The days that followed brought Rachel no cheer of life. She
had thought that her husband would take her away to his home
under Snaefell, and so remove her from the scene of her humilia-
tion. He excused himself, saying that Stappen was but a poor
place, where the great ships never put in to trade, and that there
was more chance of livelihood at Reykjavik. Rachel crushed down
her shame, and they took a mean little house in the fishing quarter.
But Stephen did no work. Once he went out four days with a
company of Englishmen as guide to the geysers, and on his return
he idled four weeks on the wharves, looking at the foreign seamen
as they arrived by the boats. The fame of his exploit at Thing-
vellir had brought him a troop of admirers, and what he wanted for
his pleasure he never lacked. But necessity began to touch him at
home, and then he hinted to Rachel that her father was rich. She
had borne his indifference to her degradation, she had not mur-
mured at the idleness that pinched them, but at that word something
in her heart seemed to break. She bent her head and said nothing.
He went on to hint that she should go to her father, who seeing her
need would surely forgive her. Then her proud spirit could brook
no more. "Rather than darken my father's doors again," she said,
"I will starve on a crust of bread and a drop of water."

Things did not mend, and Stephen began to cast down his eyes
in shame when Rachel looked at him. Never a word of blame she
spoke, but he reproached himself and talked of his old mother at
Stappen. She was the only one who could do any good with him.
She knew him and did not spare him. When she was near he
worked sometimes, and did not drink too much. He must send
for her.

Rachel raised no obstacle, and one day the old mother came,
perched upon a bony, ragged-eared pony, and with all her belong-
ings on the pack behind her. She was a little hard-featured
woman; and at the first sight of her seamed and blotched face
Rachel's spirit sank.

The old woman was active and restless. Two days after her
arrival she was at work at her old trade of splitting and drying the
stock-fish. All the difference that the change had made for her
was that she was working on the beach at Reykjavik instead of the
beach at Stappen, and living with her son and her son's wife instead
of alone.

Her coming did not better the condition of Rachel. She had
measured her new daughter-in-law from head to foot at their



I2 THE BONDMAN

first meeting, and neither smiled nor kissed her. She was devoted
to her son, and no woman was too good for him. Her son had
loved her, and Rachel had come between them. The old woman
made up her mind to hate the girl, because her fine manners and
comely face were a daily rebuke to her own coarse habits and
homely looks, and an hourly contrast always present to Stephen's

Stephen was as idle as ever, and less ashamed of his sloth now
that there was some one to keep the wolf from the door. His mother
accepted with cheerfulness the duty of bread-winner to her son, but