"Good night, my own darling."
"Goo--nigh--gran'--ma."
PART VI
"One moment in annihilation's waste
One moment of the Well of Life to taste,--
The stars are setting and the caravan
Draws to the Dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!"
I
The Danish mail-steamer "Laura," outward bound on her midwinter trip from Copenhagen to Leith, and from Leith to Iceland, carried two saloon passengers only.
One of these, a comfortable, elderly person of ample proportions, dressed in the warmest Icelandic vadmal, was an Iceland merchant returning from Edinburgh with a hundred tons of British produce. This was Jon Oddsson, formerly radical champion in politics, and now conservative leader in trade.
The other passenger was a tall, spare man apparently about fifty years of age, with large and luminous but weary eyes, long pale cheeks deeply scored with lines of thought, and a pointed beard that was beginning to be tinged with grey. This was Christian Christiansson, now ten years older than when he returned from the Riviera to London, and so changed in every feature by the strange characters which work and sorrow inscribe on a man's face with the stern hand of Time, that few or none would have recognized him.
In the interval Christian Christiansson had carried out his plans and realized his expectations. Buried in the depths of London as a man dying on shipboard is buried in the vast grave of the sea, he had lived long as one who was dead, but his hour had struck at last. For five years he had been one of the most popular of living composers. His operas, founded on the Sagas of his own country, had made Iceland familiar to people everywhere; his works had been represented in every capital; his tunes had been played in every street, and it was almost as if he had breathed over Europe and set the air to song.
Meantime he had been faithful to the pledge he had made with himself. His name was a household word, but it was no more than a name, and his identity had never been revealed. No temptation had prevailed with him to disclose it, and the few who knew his secret had found it to their interest to maintain the mystery. And now he was returning to his own country rich and famous--rich as the man who strikes ore from the rock and finds it pouring down on him in an avalanche of gold, but famous only as the "hidden folk" are famous, the good fairies who leave food and drink at the doors of poor men and then steal away before they awake in the dawn.