"Do I really have you with me once more? Do I hold you in my embrace?" she said in a low, tender tone, putting both arms on his shoulders and clasping her hands on his neck.
"Oh, my sweet one!" cried the warrior, snatching her to his heart and covering eyes, cheeks, and pouting lips with ardent kisses. "Oh, Hilda, my joy, my wife! How I longed for you--night and day--always!"
"It is almost forty days," she sighed.
"Quite forty. Ah, how long they seemed to me!"
"Oh, it was far easier for you! To be ever on the move with your brother, your comrades, to ride swiftly and fight gayly in the land of the foe. While I--I was forced to sit here in the women's rooms; to sit and weave and wait inactive! Oh, if I could only have been there too! To dash onward by your side upon a fiery horse, ride, fight, and at last--fall, with you. After a hero's life--a hero's death!"
She started up; her gray-blue eyes flashed with a wonderful light, and tossing back her waving hair she raised both arms enthusiastically.
Her husband gently drew her down again. "My high-hearted wife, my Hilda," he said, smiling, "with the instinct of a seer your ancestor chose for you the name of the glorious leader of the Valkyries. How much I owe old Hildebrand, the master at arms of the great King of the Goths! With the name the nature came to you. And his training and teaching probably did the rest."
Hilda nodded. "I scarcely knew my parents, they died so young. Ever since I could remember I was under the charge and protection of the white-bearded hero. In the palace at Ravenna he locked me in his apartments, keeping me jealously away from the pious Sisters, the nuns, and from the priests who educated my playmates,--among them the beautiful Mataswintha. I grew up with his other foster-child, dark-haired Teja. My friend Teja taught me to play the harp, but also to hurl spears and catch them on the shield. Later, when the king, and still more his daughter, the learned Amalaswintha, insisted that I must study with the women and the priests, how sullenly,"--she smiled at the remembrance,--"how angrily the old great-grandfather questioned me in the evening about what the nuns had taught me during the day! If I had recited the proverbs and Latin hymns, the Deus pater ingenite or Salve sancta parens by Sedulius--I scarcely knew more than the beginning!"--she laughed merrily--"he shook his massive head, muttered something in his long white beard, and cried: 'Come, Hilda! Let's get out of doors. Come on the sea. There I will tell you about the ancient gods and heroes of our people.' Then he took me far, far from the crowded harbors into the solitude of a desolate, savage island, where the gulls circled and the wild swan built her nest amid the rushes; there we sat down on the sand, and, while the foaming waves rolled close to our feet, he told me tales of the past. And what tales old Hildebrand could tell! My eyes rested intently on his lips as, with my elbows propped on his knee, I gazed into his face. How his sea-gray eyes sparkled! how his white hair fluttered in the evening breeze! His voice trembled with enthusiasm; he no longer knew where he was; he saw everything he related, or often--in disconnected words--sang. When the tale ended, he waked as if from a dream, started up and laughed, stroking my head: 'There! There! Now I've once more blown those saints, with their dull, mawkish gentleness, out of your soul, as the north wind, sweeping through the church windows, drives out the smoke of the incense.' But they had taken no firm hold," she added, smiling.
"And so you grew up half a pagan, as Gelimer says," replied her husband, raising his finger warningly, "but as a full heroine, who believes in nothing so entirely as the glory of her people."
"And in yours--and in your love," Hilda murmured tenderly, kissing him on the forehead. "Yet it is true," she added, "if you Vandals had not been the nearest kinsfolk of my Goths, I don't know whether I should have loved you--ah, no; I must have loved you--when, sent by Gelimer, you came to woo me. But as it is, to see you was to love you. I owe all my happiness to Gelimer! I will always remember it: it shall bind me to him when otherwise," she added slowly and thoughtfully, "many things might repel me."
"My brother desired, by this marriage, to end the hostility, bridge the gulf which had separated the two kingdoms since--since that bloody deed of Hilderic. It did not succeed! He united only us, not our nations. He is full of heavy cares and gloomy thoughts."
"Yes. I often think he must be ill," said Hilda, shaking her head.
"He?--The strongest hero in our army! He alone--not even Brother Zazo--can bend my outstretched sword-arm."
"Not ill in body,--soul-sick! But hush! Here he comes. See how sorrowful, how gloomy he looks. Is that the brow, the face, of a conqueror?"
CHAPTER IV
A tall figure appeared in the colonnade leading from the interior of the dwelling to the open doorway of the hall.
This man without helmet, breastplate, or sword-belt wore a tight-fitting dark-gray robe, destitute of color or ornament. He often paused in his slow advance as if lost in meditation, with hands clasped behind his back; his head drooped forward a little, as though burdened by anxious thought. His lofty brow was deeply furrowed; his light-brown hair and beard were thickly sprinkled with gray, which formed a strange contrast to his otherwise youthful appearance. His eyes were fixed steadily on the floor,--their color and expression were still unrecognizable,--and pausing again under the pillared arch of the entrance, he sighed heavily.
"Hail, Gelimer, victorious hero!" cried the young wife, joyously. "Take what I have had ready for you ever since your return home was announced to-day." Seizing a thick laurel wreath lying on the table before her, she eagerly raised it. A slight but expressive wave of the hand stopped her.
"Wreaths are not suited for the sinner's head," said the new-comer in a low tone, "but ashes, ashes!"
Hilda, hurt and sorrowful, laid down the garland.
"Sinner?" cried her husband, indignantly. "Why, yes; so are we all--in the eyes of the saints. But you less than others. Are we never to rejoice?"
"Let those rejoice who can!"
"Oh, brother, you too can rejoice. When the hero spirit comes, when the whirl of battle surrounds you, with loud shouts (I heard it myself and my heart exulted in your delight), you dashed before us all into the thickest throng of the Moorish riders. And you cried aloud from sheer joy when you tore the banner from the hand of the fallen bearer; you had ridden him down by the mere shock of your charger's rush."
"Ay, that was indeed beautiful!" cried Gelimer, suddenly lifting his head, while a pair of large brown eyes flashed from under long dark lashes. "Isn't the cream stallion superb? He overthrows everything. He bears victory."
"Ay, when he bears Gelimer!" exclaimed a clear voice, and a boy--scarcely beyond childhood, for the first down was appearing on his delicate rosy cheeks--a boy strongly resembling Gibamund and Gelimer glided across the threshold and rushed with outstretched arms toward the hero.
"Oh, brother, how I love you! And how I envy you! But on the next pursuit of the Moors you must take me with you, or I will go against your will." And he threw both arms around his brother's towering figure.
"Ammata, my darling, my heart's treasure," cried Gelimer, tenderly, stroking the lad's long golden locks with a loving touch, "I have brought you from the booty a little milk-white horse as swift as the wind. I thought of you the instant it was led before me. And you, fair sister-in-law, forgive me. I was unkind when I came in; I was foil of heavy cares. For I came--"
"From the King," cried a deep voice from the corridor, and a man in full armor rushed in, whose strong resemblance to the others marked him as the fourth brother. Features of noble mould, a sharp but finely modelled nose, broad brow, and yellow, fiery eyes set almost too deeply