In the Land of the Great Snow Bear Part 2

It takes Claude nearly an hour to drag himself to a neighbouring knoll, for one limb is smashed, and he has lost blood. He throws himself down now, or rather he falls, and when next he becomes conscious the sun is shining down warm on him from a bright blue sky; birds are singing near, and the wild flowers are open and nodding to a gentle breeze.

And yonder--oh, joy!--down there in the hollow, there is smoke curling up from an Icelandic farm. He shouts till hoa.r.s.e, but no one appears.

Wearily he leans back, and once again his eyes are closed, and he is back once more in his own room at Dunallan Towers. No pain now, for his sad-eyed but beautiful mother is bending over him, and soothing him.

Is it so? Not quite.

"Jarl! jarl! Wake, jarl, wake?"

The jarl wakes. The jarl looks up.

Over him is bending a huge male figure, dressed in a long-sleeved waistcoat and lofty nightcap. Pained though he is, Claude cannot help thinking he is the ugliest man he ever saw. He is a giant in stature.

He kneels beside young Alwyn, and there is a kindness visible in his little grey eyes, as he strokes Claude's face, just as if he had been a colt. Byarnie, for such is this giant's name, soon finds out how matters stand, and gently he lifts Claude in his arms and places him on his shoulder, and then marches off.

Preposterous and humorous thoughts will often pa.s.s through the mind, even when the body is in agony; and now, Claude could not help recalling the story of Jack the Giant-killer, and fancied himself Jack being carried away on the shoulders of Blunderbore. But not to a castle with a lawn littered with skulls and bones was Claude borne.

He had probably fainted with pain, and when he again became sensible he was no longer on Byarnie's back, but in a comfortable warm bed in an antique but well-furnished room, and being attended to by a couple of old dames, both dressed alike, in gowns of dark rustling silk, and elevated steeple-like skull-caps of white net. And both, too, were alike wrinkled and ugly. They had almost finished dressing his leg.

"Thou must not speak, dear; thou must lie still and sleep."

Good enough English, but spoken in a strange monotone--no rising or falling of the voice.

In a few minutes the work was done, and poor Claude found infinite relief. Then they brought him coffee and milk, and made him drink, and a little dram of schnapps which he also had to swallow. They evidently thought him a child, and stroked his face as Byarnie had done. One left the room, and the other took her seat beside the bed, and, still gently pa.s.sing her hand downwards over Claude's face, began to "croon" over that beautiful English lullaby--

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed; Countless blessings without number, Gently falling on thy head."

The voice was quavering, but the music was sweet. How soft the pillows felt--they were eider-down. How light the quilt--that also was of the same. Under such circ.u.mstances it is little wonder that Claude soon forgot everything and fell into a deep and childlike slumber.

The scenes, it seemed to Claude, were continually shifting. He did not _feel_ that he had slept, only that he had just closed his eyes and opened them again, when lo! the crones were gone, the sunlight was no longer shimmering in through the crimson and yellow flowers in the little window as he had last seen it. The room was lighted by a lofty lamp that stood on an ancient high-backed oaken piano, throwing a flood of light over all the apartment. A great grey cat was singing herself to sleep on the piano stool, a fire was burning on the low hearth--a fire of peat and wood, that looked very cheerful--and above the window, in a tiny wicker cage, hung a tiny and miserable-looking snow-flea.

Claude took all this in at a glance. But none of these things interested him. His eyes were riveted on the only figure now in the room. A beautiful young girl, almost spirit-like she looked. So thought Claude. She stood leaning against the piano reading a tiny gilt-edged book. She was dressed in a long flowing robe of crimson adorned with snow-white fur. Her fair hair floated free over her shoulders, and her sweet face seemed very sad as she read, all unconscious of Claude's wondering gaze. But presently she became aware of it. A slight tint of crimson suffused her face, but next moment she advanced boldly towards the bed, and laid her hand--such a tiny hand--on his brow.

Claude would have spoken, but she lifted a finger and beckoned him to lie silent.

Lie silent? Yes. Claude would not have disobeyed the behests of so sweet a nurse whatever they might have been.

There was food to be partaken of; he took it. Nauseous brown medicine also; he quaffed it.

Presently, however, there was a change of nurses. One of the droll old ladies came back, and remained an hour. Claude thought it ten, and felt in the third heaven when his young nurse again returned.

She seated herself at a little table facing Claude, and without even knocking at the door, Byarnie the giant stepped in, and placed a zither in front of her. It was a strange household, but, altogether, Iceland is a strange place.

She was going to play to soothe her patient. And sweetly she played too. Old-world airs, but how delicate the touch, how tasteful the fingering. And now she sings. "_Who_," thought Claude, "can have taught her that wild sad song? Can a girl so young as she have loved and lost?"

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing; But coldly she turns to his grave and weeps, For her heart with her hero is lying."

But Claude's sorrow was to come. Inflammation was succeeded by high fever, and for days he lay in a state of delirium--dreamful, racking, burning delirium.

Then came peace and calmness.

CHAPTER FOUR.

IDYLLIC LIFE IN ICELAND.

Iceland! land of flowers and sunshine? Ah no; but Iceland! land of storms; land of the thunder-cloud; land of lordly hills, whose strange, jagged peaks pierce the clouds by day, and at night seem to nod to stars or moon; land of rugged sh.o.r.es, around which for ever toss and roll the arctic billows; land of glorious sunsets; land of the Aurora; land of romance too, a romance of the olden time, for do not ancient Vikings slumber on its sh.o.r.es in their wave-rocked graves? Iceland! land of peace and innocence? Yes. Iceland! land of love? Yes, land of love-- of love as pure and true, if not so pa.s.sionate, as ever budded and bloomed beneath the sunny skies of fair Italia.

It was the evening of the eighth day since poor Claude's accident. The fever had all gone and left him. He lay there pale and weak and thin, as quiet and as obedient as a child.

It was very still in that ancient room; the purring of the great grey cat seemed very loud, so did the gentle twitter of the snow-flea in his wee wicker cage, and when an old raven, perched on a stool near the fire, rustled his feathers, the noise sounded harsh and startling.

It was near sunset, for the window was in the west, and the sun shimmered in through the red and green and yellow of the flowers.

"Dear nursie, what is your name?"

The words appeared to fall unconsciously from the lips of our stricken hero.

In his fever dreams, he just dimly remembered hearing it, but he was not quite certain. Anyhow, he wished to hear it from the girl herself.

"Dear nursie, what is your name?"

"My name is Meta?"--this from the maiden, with a blush and a smile.

There was a pause. He would have liked her to have asked, "And what is yours?"

But she did not. She only sat silently there, with the book on her lap, as she had been sitting for the last half-hour.

"Mine is Claude," he said at last. "May I call you Meta?"

"Ye-es," with modest hesitation.

"Do call me Claude?"

"Claude," said the girl, advancing towards him with a very serious countenance, and laying a tiny hand on his pulse, "I think you are going to die. Oh! I trust not. But there is a strange glitter in your eyes to-night--a look I like not, and your pulse flickers feebly. I will call aunt."

She was hurrying away.

"Meta!"

She came back.

"Meta, I will not die if--"

He paused hesitatingly.

"If what?"