Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/34

 live where she was, a prisoner chained to a rock; but she would not repine, she could wait, for the time of her deliverance was near. Her liberator was coming. He was at her feet; he was her child, her boy, her darling; and while he slumbered she saw him wax and grow, and when he awoke she saw her fetters break. Thus on the bridge of hope's own rainbow she spanned her little world of shame and pain.

The years went by, and Jason grew to be a strong-limbed, straight, stalwart lad, red-haired and passionate-hearted, reckless and improvident as far as improvidence was possible amid the conditions of his bringing up. He was a human waterfowl, and all his days were spent on the sea. Such work as was also play he was eager to do. He would clamber up the rocks of the island outside the harbour, to take the eggs of the eider-duck from the steep places where she built her nest; and from the beginning of May to the end of June he found his mother in the eider-down that she cleaned for the English traders. People whispered to Rachel that he favoured his father, both in stature and character, but she turned a deaf ear to their gloomy forebodings. Her son was as fair as the day to look upon; and if he had his lazy humours, he had also one quality which overtopped them all—he loved his mother. People whispered again that in this regard also he resembled his father, who amid many vices had the same sole virtue.

Partly to shut him off from the scandal of the gossips, who might tell him too soon the story of his mother's broken life, and partly out of the selfishness of her bruised spirit, Rachel had brought up her boy to speak the tongue of her mother—the English tongue. Her purpose failed her, for Jason learned Icelandic on the beach as fast as English in the house; he heard the story of his mother's shame and of his father's baseness, and brought it back to her in the colours of a thrice-told tale. Vain effort of fear and pride! It was nevertheless to prepare the lad for the future that was before him.

And through all the days of her worse than widowhood, amid dark memories of the past and thoughts of the future wherein many passions straggled together, the hope lay low down in Rachel's mind that Stephen would return to her. Could he continue to stand in dread of the threat of his own wife? No, no, no. It had been only the hot word of a moment of anger, and it was gone. Stephen was staying away in fear of the brother of Patriksen. When that man was dead, or out of the way, he would return. Then he would see their boy, and