Chapter Twenty Two.
Meta’s Strange Adventures.
We are back once again in Meta’s cottage in Iceland. There is but little change here since the day Claude bade his betrothed a long farewell.
It is evening. Yonder by the fire sits one of Meta’s aunts, working away at her “rock and her reel,” as she seemed always working, spinning, spinning, spinning.
Meta near her, with her zither. She had been playing, but her fingers now lay listlessly on her strings, only now and then some sweet wailing notes and chords were brought out as if the hands were en rapport with her heart.
“And you really say you saw him in your dreams, dear auntie?”
Whirr—whirr—whirr, went the wheel.
“I saw him,” replied the kindly but ancient dame. “I saw him. I can see him now as I saw him in my dream. He is lying on the ground, and his face hardly less pale than the snow.” Whirr—whirr—it—it. “Oh, auntie, don’t frighten me, dear!”
“But kindly men are kneeling by him. They raise him. He revives. The blood returns to his cheeks. He will live!”
“Bless you, auntie, bless you!” Whirr—whirr went the wheel. The snow-flea in his cage twittered fondly. The raven on his log, which he seemed never to leave, stretched himself a leg at a time, then both wings at once. He was very old, that raven, and Poe’s looked not more weird, and—
“His mate long dead, his nestlings flown,
The moss had o’er his eyrie grown,
While all the scenes his youth had known
Were changed and old.”
Meta plays now; she is more happy. Her aunt has given her hope.
But somehow she does not play long; she is easily tired now, so she rises and lays aside the instrument, then stands by the window to watch the snowy mountain peaks changing to pink and to purple in the sun’s parting rays.
Summer has fled from the Norland hills. The songbirds have gone—the martin, and woodlark, and robin; the wild flowers have faded—the blue geraniums, the pink-eyed diapensias, the daisies, and the purple wild thyme; only the green of the creeping saxifrage bedecks the rocks, and hardy sea-pinks and ferns still grow in the glades and by the brook-sides. But autumn winds sigh mournfully through the leafless birch trees and drooping willows, and rustle the withered leaves of the wild myrtle on the braesides.
With a sigh Meta turns away from the window.
Almost at the same time there is a knock at the door, and Guielmyun, brother to Byarnie, and, like himself, a giant, rushed in.
“The bird, the bird?” he cried, “he is—”
But Meta heard no more. Next minute she was standing by the cage.
Panting, ragged, and wretched-looking and dripping wet was the messenger that had flown so far; but oh, bless it! it bore the little quill that contained the missive of sadness and love.
There was no more weariness in Meta’s looks now, but stern, firm resolve.
“I’ll save him if I can,” she said.
“A young lady in the study wants to see me?” said Professor Hodson to his neat-handed waiting-maid. “Bless my heart, what a strange thing!”
But stranger still, five minutes after this the good old professor was sitting opposite this young lady, and had given orders that no one should come near the door till he rang the bell.
“Dear me, my dear, de-ar me!” he was saying; “and you really tell me that a sea-bird carried this message all the way from the icy north? But there, there, I see, it is his own handwriting. And yours is a strange, not to say a sad story. But it will all come right in the end—perhaps, you know.”
“Oh, sir!” cried Meta, “you will make some effort to save him? You will not let him die in those terrible regions of gloom and desolation?”
“Gloom and desolation, dear? Yes, yes, to be sure, you’re quite right; they must be somewhat gloomy and desolate. No morning paper, no morning rolls or hot toast. Well, well, we will see in a day or two what can be done. The Kittywake, too, she has been posted long ago a lost ship and the insurance paid. But even she might turn up, you know. I only say she might. Stranger things have happened.”
Meta took the professor’s soft white hand as she bade him good-bye in the doorway, and touched it reverently with her lips.
“Good-bye, my dear, good night. You’ve got nice lodgings? Yes, I think you said you had. Good night, good night. God bless you.”
The savants are assembled in the largest room in the professor’s house—a room where lectures are often given and wonderful experiments made, but a cosy room for all that, with two great fires burning in it, and a soft crimson light diffused throughout it from the great candelabra.
There is a stranger here to-night—a stranger to us, I mean—a man about fifty, a sailor evidently, from his build and bronze. He is very pleasant in manner and voice; his face is handsome, and his smile strikes you as coming directly from the heart.
They had been dining; the walnuts and wine were now on the table, and conversation was at its best.
“Well, gentlemen, I shall call the young lady, and you shall hear the marvellous tale from her own lips.”
Somewhat abashed at first to find herself in such august company, and in a room more beautiful than anything she could ever have dreamed about, Meta was soon reassured by the professor’s kindly voice. He sat beside her, and held one hand in his.
Then she told her story, as she had told it to Professor Hodson in his study. She hid nothing, kept nothing back, told all the truth, even about her love and betrothal to Claude, talking low but earnestly, as innocently as a child repeating its prayer by its mother’s knee.
There was no more eager listener than Captain Jahnsen, the sailor I have mentioned. As long as she spoke his eyes were riveted on her face, sometimes he even changed colour in his seeming excitement. When she had finished, he stood up.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been all my life a man of action, not of words; and now what I have to say must be said briefly indeed. For the last many years I have been a sailor and adventurer combined. I have dug gold, ploughed the sea, and searched for diamonds; not unsuccessfully, as you are all aware. For years and years previous to that I was a Greenland sailor, not hailing from any British port; not sailing in beautiful barques or full-rigged ships, but in an open boat from Lapland. What made me so? Fate. I once commanded as splendid a little craft as ever sailed the sea. I had on board my wife and my child-daughter. I was wrecked—a sailor’s luck, you say, but mine was a sadder one than falls to the lot of most sailors. My dear wife—ah! gentlemen, the memory of that terrible night almost unmans me even yet—was killed in my arms by a falling spar; my daughter was swept away. Two sailors and I alone were saved by a Lapland walrus boat. We lay-to for hours. No sign of life was visible; again I dropped insensible; I was ill, mad, raving for weeks. Yet calmness and peace came at last. But never more dared I go near that awful coast. To me the very memory of it and of that night has ever been like a nightmare.”
“Where were you wrecked?” asks Professor Hodson.
“On the Icelandic coast, north of Reykjavik.”
Meta has turned suddenly pale, and her eyes fill with tears.
She timidly advances. “Father,” she murmurs.
There is no wild excitement; no melodrama. Captain Jahnsen stoops and kisses his daughter’s brow.
“I’m sure, dear Meta,” he said, “we’ll love each other very much.”
Yet, though lacking melodramatic effect, the scene was touching in the extreme.
Poor Professor Hodson! he was fain to wipe his eyes.
“Dear me, dear me, dear me!” he said, in his quick, sharp way of speaking, “I never thought that I would shed tears again in my life. Dear me, dear me!”
“Now, my child,” said the professor to Meta next morning, “I’m going to ran down to Dunallan Towers, and see her ladyship. No, as you wish me not to, I shall never breathe your name. Good-bye; keep up your heart. I’ll do the best I can.”
Yes, Lady Alwyn was at home, and would see Professor Hodson.
And presently she enters.
Very handsome yet, very stately, very sad withal. She beckons the professor to a seat. “You may not guess what I have come about?”
“Yes, I can,” she says. “You bring no news of my son, but you think of sending a search-party out?”
“That was mooted between my colleagues and me.”
“Professor Hodson, I fear—indeed, I know—I shall never see my son alive or dead again. I live but to mourn for him. I live but to repent the harsh words that drove him from my door—from our door—my boy’s and mine. To see his poor pet dog following him with downcast head; to see even the bird fly away; I— Oh, Professor Hodson!”
Here, woman-like, the poor lady burst into tears, and the tender-hearted professor feels very much inclined to follow suit.
“We may find him yet?”
“Oh! is there a hope, a chance?”
“There is, and we can but try. We have thought of fitting out a yacht.”
“There is his yacht—his own yacht. Take it, and welcome. If not strong enough, do everything for her. And, professor, all the expense must be mine. And I, too, will sail in her in search of my boy.”
“Your ladyship, I—”
“Deny me not. I will not be denied.”
“Your ladyship little knows the danger—”
“Talk not of danger. I’ll be happy every day to think I am braving the dangers my boy has braved before me. Professor Hodson,” she says, after a long pause, during which the savant has been musing on many matters, all of which revolve round Meta—“Professor Hodson, I feel younger, happier since you have come.”
“Your ladyship, then, must not be gainsaid. Well, I will accept the terms you so generously propose. We will at once fit up the Alba. All things promise well. We have in Captain Jahnsen a thorough gentleman, a sailor, and one who knows Greenland well. He has a daughter, too, who has been to sea. Might she not—”
“Oh yes, yes, if she would but come. She would be a companion to me and I to her.”
“Well, well, well. We will consider it all arranged.”
The professor rubs his hands, and laughs a joyous laugh; and the lady, rising, smilingly leads the way to the room where they lunch together.
The Alba is at sea. It is a lovely day in the first week of April. Well off the last of the Shetland Isles is she, and bearing west with a bit of northerly in it. Not steaming, though she has been fitted with engines, and can boast of a funnel elegant and pretty enough for any one to admire.
No, not steaming, for there is a ten-knot beam-wind blowing, and her sails are outfurled to it. White they are, and whiter still they look in the spring sunshine.
The decks are white also, and the very ropes, so neatly coiled thereon, are swirls of snowy-white. Everything about this natty yacht is neat and trim. The capstan is of polished mahogany, the binnacle is fit to be a drawing-room ornament. Whatever ought to be black about her is like polished ebony, and the brasswork shines like burnished gold.
On the deck sit two ladies. One, the elder, leans languidly back in her cane chair; the other—it is Meta—is sitting on a footstool at her knee, reading aloud.
A sailor would say the Alba is a trifle down by the head; only a sailor could notice it. The Alba is heavily fortified with wood and iron around and between the bows. But all water and stores will first be used from the foremost tanks, then she will ride the waves like a sea-bird.
How delightful the breeze! how pleasant the sunshine! and the Alba herself appears to feel the importance of the charge she has on board of her, and is proud in consequence. She nods and curtsies to each passing wave, kisses some, turns coyly away from others, and altogether behaves as if she really were the thing of life the sailors on board half imagine she is.
“So gaily goes the ship,
When the wind blows free.”