Chapter Nine.
The Parting.
Among the Northern nations, especially the Norse, you meet types of men and women as utterly different from those of Southern climes as if they belonged to another sphere. The same blessed religion nevertheless binds us all with its golden chain. Natures like those of Meta and honest Byarnie—who, be it remembered, are not creatures of the imagination, but true examples of a class—I have never met elsewhere.
The nearest approach to them in manners and ways of thinking, I have found in my own dear Highlands of Scotland.
Very many, both of the Norse, such as those met with in Shetland and Iceland, as well as our Highlanders, are very deeply imbued with the spirit and true sentiment of religion. It is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Religion is the weft in the beautiful web of such lives as these.
When women like Meta love it is very pure love, for the very reason I have stated, for Meta was not ashamed to go on her knees with her love. A very peculiar girl, you say? Would to Heaven there were millions like her in this fair land of ours.
On the very evening of their reunion, Claude left his bride-elect, and went thundering away through the moonlight along the stony path on his sure-footed pony.
He would come again, next day or next, he told her, but duty was duty, and must be obeyed.
He was more happy than might be expected—happy because hopeful.
He found everything well on board, just as he had expected he would.
“I’ve engaged a few more hands, sir,” the mate told him. “The right metal I like a mixture of nationalities, and yet I don’t. Bother the foreign scum that they man British ships with nowadays, sir, leaving honest English Jack on shore to starve.—But give me a crew like what we now have, sir—a crew mostly Scotch and English; then I say one or two Norwegians or Danes don’t do much harm.”
“Right, Mr Lloyd. And now I must tell you I am going to engage an extra hand. Can you make room?”
“Put him in a bunk, sir.”
“A bunk, Mr Lloyd? He’d never be able to get in, and if he did he couldn’t stick his legs out. He is seven feet high and over, and broad in proportion.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the mate. “But I have it, sir; I’ve got a hammock big enough to hold an elephant.”
“That’ll do. Good night, then.”
As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram.
He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay—the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy.
He slept and dreamt about this.
Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony’s hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude.
It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy.
“Have you got good news?” was Meta’s first question.
She answered it herself before he got time to speak.
“Yes, you have,” she said; “I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?”
Claude’s face fell just a little.
“I wish it were,” he replied. “No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram.”
They went and sat down to read it.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “Why didn’t she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!”
Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public document, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines.
Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening sunshine.
Claude laughed again, and caught her hand.
“I don’t mean in that way, silly child,” he said. “There; we will read between the words in the way I mean.”
Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart—and a deal more I need not note.
“Don’t you see, Meta?”
“Dark and dim, as through a glass,” said Meta, musing. “Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy.”
“Well, I am, because I feel she will relent.”
“I wonder what she is doing now?”
And Meta’s question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.
I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on sunshiny days, and call him “Diogenes?” But here comes Janet at last.
“Just one question, Janet, and I’ll let you go. How did Lady Alwyn feel when Claude went away?”
“Oh, sir,” says Janet, “she was far too proud to express her feelings to me in that way. You know, sir, when glad she always told me, but her sorrow she invariably kept to herself.”
“So, as she said nothing, you inferred she was unhappy?”
“For that reason I knew she was. Did I put in the diary, sir, that our poor boy, Claude, told me about his dream—consulted me ere he had that terrible interview with her ladyship?”
“Yes, yes, Janet, that is here.”
“Well, sir, it was first Fingal’s going away, trotting so sad-like after his master, and he never once looking back, and then the snow-bird going next. That, I think, nearly broke her heart. But oh, she was proud, sir.”
“She never owned her grief, then?”
“No, sir; but I’ve caught her often in tears, though she tried to hide them. She grew far more active than ever after that. She seemed to hate the very sight of indoors, and, wet day or dry day, she would be always out.”
“Doing good, doubtless?”
“Visiting the sick, sir; ay, and often sitting down sewing in a sick person’s room. The neighbours noticed her grief. They all loved her, they all pitied her. But it was at night, I think, she suffered most. Her room was next to mine, and it is often, often I’ve heard her pacing up and down the floor till nearly morning. On stormy nights, sir, when the wind was roaring round the old turrets, and howling in the trees then she would send for me.
“‘Janet,’ she would say, with her sad, beautiful smile, ‘I cannot sleep to-night. You must read to me.’”
As Janet is now feeling in her pocket for her handkerchief, and tears are choking her utterance, I gently dismiss her, and go on writing.
“Yes, Meta,” replied Claude, “and I often wonder too; but there is one thing that does give me joy, and that is this: she knows I love her and am not really unfilial.”
Claude found Meta much more hopeful next day, and more happy. Sometimes she was almost gay.
“By-the-by, Claude,” she said, “I’ve something to show you. You must promise to believe all I say.”
“Implicitly.”
“And not laugh at me?”
“Never a smile.”
“Well, follow me.”
Claude did.
She led him round to the back of the cottage, and there in a big aviary—evidently the work of Byarnie’s hands—were seven great sea-birds.
“Now you’re going to laugh,” cried Meta, with a warning finger.
“Well, no wonder. Such queer pets, Meta!”
“But they’re not pets, Claude, though I love them. They are all going with you.”
“All going with me! Those funny old things! Ha! ha! ha! Forgive me, darling, I can’t help it.”
“Well, I do forgive you. And when I tell you that this particular seagull makes the best carrier in the world, far before any pigeon, because it can fly ten times as far, and never get lost at sea—”
“I reared those from the shell,” interrupted honest Byarnie, his big face all smiles. “And I’ve reared many such.”
“Byarnie,” said Claude, “you’ll come with me, and look after these birds, eh?”
Byarnie jumped and laughed, clapped his hand upon his leg, and jumped and laughed again, and then went skipping round with all the grace of an infant elephant, till Claude and Meta also laughed to see his uncouth exuberance.
“My brother will come here, and my sister too, and look after the house and farm,” he cried. “He! he! ho! ho! Byarnie’s the happiest man ’tween Reykjavik and Christiansund.”
Day after day went by, but still Claude was at the little capital of Iceland, or with Meta. He was waiting the arrival of the mail: she had broken a shaft or something, and eager and able though he was to get away to the land of the Northern Lights and the sea of ice, he did not begrudge himself the respite.
The mail was sighted and signalled at last, however, and came puffing and blowing in.
Claude had letters from his employers and from many a friend, but none from his mother.
But Janet’s letter must in some measure have made up for this, else he would not have ridden right away out to Meta’s dwelling.
Ah, well, it was their last day together anyhow!
There they were together now whom seas would soon sunder—two warm, loving, hoping hearts. Would they ever meet again?