In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset Page A

adventure in the garden the evening before—was that real or glamour? She had been so like Ingunn that it could not be true—and he had felt that Ingunn herself was there, quite near him, wailing in the fires of sorrow and impotence. And all at once he saw it—if she had not been able to make him hear, if she had been forced to witness it, in the place where she was, bound with fetters of gloom and death and powerlessness—that he yielded himself to the pixy or whatever she was—
    It was as though something went to pieces within him. Sorrow and tenderness flowed over, hot as blood, and filled his being, thawed and relaxed every fibre—
so
near had he been to working her destruction—after he had striven, all the years she had lived, to sustain her as well as he could.
    Then it flashed on him that he had called on Mary for help—and he wondered at it; for it was years since he had asked anything of
her
. It had seemed that he must think himself above seeking help there, when he wilfully defied her Son. He had said his Ave as he had been wont to do from childhood, in order to show her such honour as was her due, but never with the thoughtof gaining anything. And now he had called upon her, as a lost child calls for its mother.
    Olav turned over on his other side and settled himself with his face buried in his arm so as to shut out the darkness.
Salve Regina, mater misericordia
—he would repeat the anthem over and over again until he fell asleep and had no other thought in his mind. “Ay, Mary, now I will come and pray for grace with our Lord.”
    By turns he slept awhile, woke again, slept, and tossed in a riot of disconnected dream-visions, and over them all was a vague horror—each time he awoke with a stab of pain at the heart. But each time he settled himself again, summoning all his will to the same end: the prayer that was to be his shield that night.
    And then at last he woke and felt that the sun was shining and that he was rested. And there still lingered in his mind the aftertaste of a morning dream, giving sweetness and security beyond compare.
    He was penetrated all through by the raw cold of the ground, but he lay still, gazing about him in the woodland, where the dew glistened blue and white in the brightness of the morning. The drops lay thick on every blade of grass. The bushes with the dark, hard, spiked leaves shone like burnished steel. A blue haze lay among the trees, round which the ivy twined its green curtain. And the dream ran on in his mind like the soft and milky morning light.
    He had thought he lay in a woman’s lap, with his head against her heart, and from his feeling of deep sweetness, free from desire, he knew who she was, and said it: Mother! He did not recall the look of her face—did not recall it now—but in his dream he thought he had recognized her, though he had been but a tiny witless infant when she died.
    Arnvid had also been dimly present once in his dream, in a long, white garment—the habit of his order, no doubt—and Arnvid had spoken to his mother; but they had talked as it were over his head, as though he had been a child in swaddling-clothes that his mother held in her lap. Bishop Torfinn he had also seen. Their figures were all illumined as clouds are by the sun behind them, but this refulgence did not shine upon him; and he knew that it was not the sun, but a knowledge, or a vision, that was theirs; but he had it not, he only saw the reflection of it in them.
    A little church bell began to tinkle not far away. Olav got tohis feet, stiff with cold. He was in a sorry state, with kirtle rent and soiled. He brushed and picked off leaves and litter. If he had only had a cloak with a hood to it—he took it off and carried it over his arm; thus his going hatless would be less noticed.
    Olav followed the sound of the bell; the path led down along the edge of the beechwood. On rounding the corner he looked involuntarily to the westward—but instantly thought it would