In the Land of the Great Snow Bear Part 3

"If you--if you will stay and nurse me."

"I will; but now sleep. You are very weak, and, see, twilight is creeping up from the fiord. Close your eyes, and I will play to you."

"Meta," said Claude next day.

"Yes, Claude."

Claude felt happy to be called Claude. Remember, he was very weak and ill, and in this condition even men grow childish.

"Tell me something about yourself. You were not always in this island.

You even talk sweetly beautiful English."

"I am Norwegian. My father was a sailor, the captain of a barque. He always took mother and me everywhere. We were all he had. Thus I learned English. We often traded to Reykjavik. My two aunts used to live there."

"Yes, Meta; and your parents?"

"Alas! we were wrecked on this wild coast; both were drowned. My dear mother lies buried in the little graveyard yonder. My poor father was-- never--found."

Her face was hurriedly buried in her hands, and tears welled through her fingers.

Tears filled Claude's eyes too, but he spoke not. He knew well how sacred grief and tears like hers are.

But soon she lifted her tearful face.

"They are both in heaven, Claude," she said.

Claude hastened, with good tact, to change the subject. When he told her of his father's sad death and of his mother's perpetual sorrow, then even Meta felt that something had suddenly grown up in their hearts to draw them together in friendship.

We will be brother and sister, she thought; but, alas! he will go, and I shall see him never more again.

After this, though Meta still played, sung, and read to her patient as before, patient and nurse talked more together.

Meta told Claude of her early life, and Claude exchanged confidences.

"I would dearly like to see your great lady mother," said Meta one day, about two weeks after their first earnest conversation.

"You may one day," said Claude, thoughtfully.

"What? she may come here?--here in your ship? Is she very, _very_ proud? She might not deign to speak to a sailor's daughter," she added.

"Oh yes, dear Meta," exclaimed Claude, with enthusiasm; "she would speak to you. She would thank you--she would bless you for having saved the life of her only son."

"My aunts did that; not I," said innocent Meta.

"No, Meta, no; but you, and you alone, saved my worthless life-- worthless to all but my mother."

There is a joy in returning health and strength that only those who have been really and dangerously ill can understand. It was still the sweet summer time when Claude was able to go out once more. Very feebly went be at first, but in the keen, fresh, mountain air, vigour came fast. He was soon able to take long rambles, then longer rides. How delightful these rides were; how glorious, but sometimes how terrible and awesome, was the scenery!

They rode on ponies, Meta and Claude, while the great, unwieldy Byarnie trotted along by their side, or ran on ahead; for often there were rivers to ford, and gorges to descend, without e'er a path except that found, extempore, by this honest, but ghoul-like groom.

Many and many a day after, when imprisoned in the icy North without hope of deliverance, except through the valley of death, did Claude Alwyn look back with joy and pleasure to these excursions. He remembered every feature of the scenery--the frowning cliffs, the towering mountains, the broad, shallow rivers, the deep ravines and glens, the cliffs and rocks, the great boulders that seemed about to topple over and hurry them to destruction, the wild birds, the green, green sward, the beautiful mosses, and the still more lovely wild flowers. But, above all, he remembered the innocent, childlike face of Meta, that used to look into his so trustingly as she called him "brother Claude."

Sometimes they would seat themselves together by the banks of a stream where Byarnie would be fishing, and Meta would tell her brother such wondrous tales--mostly Icelandic and Norse fairy stories, about which there is so great a charm. Claude loved to hear her talk; there was such an earnestness about her while she related tales of folk-lore, as if she really believed them all herself. But when she came to speak of the ancient Vikings, and their deeds of valour and prowess, then the maiden's eyes sparkled, and there came a brighter glow in her cheeks, that told of a bold heart that beat within her breast, a heart that could not only love but _dare_.

So weeks sped on, so even months pa.s.sed by, and surely Paul and Virginia led no more idyllic life than did Claude and Meta during this time.

They sat near a geyser one lovely day in July. There was no great eruption that day, no startling and awful upthrow of boiling water, only now and then a bubbling, rumbling sound, which made a rude ba.s.s to the song of the birds that hovered near.

Giant Byarnie had boiled some eggs in a spring. Byarnie always provided luncheon for the party of one kind or another. He had placed the eggs in the sun, and had gone away to a distance to milk a cow. I am really afraid that Byarnie was not particular whose cow it was. Cows are often public property in Iceland. Anyhow he found a cow, two of them for that matter, so he went to pull some of the sweetest gra.s.s to lay before one to keep her quiet while he filled his pannikin.

Meanwhile Meta and brother Claude sat on a bank near the spring. The sunshine was very soft and warm, and the air was filled with the odour of wild thyme.

Meta was silent and sad, for to-morrow Claude was going away--never, never, she thought to return again. She could not speak much. Very little would have made her cry, and she felt determined not to do that.

Claude was silent also.

And Byarnie, away down in the valley yonder, went on milking his cow--or rather somebody else's cow--and singing in Norse to himself. Presently Claude put out his hand and took that of Meta. It was very cold.

"Dear sister Meta," he said.

She felt she wanted to cry more than ever now.

"I am going away to-morrow--south to my mother, dear; south to my own bonnie land. I am going away--"

Oh, how the tears rained now! There was no keeping them back. She threw herself on the gra.s.s and sobbed as if her heart would really burst.

Claude could say nothing for a moment or two.

"Meta! Meta!" he cried at last, "look up--speak to me. Listen, dear; I am going south to tell my mother I will never many any one except you, dear Meta. Do not speak; I know you love me as I love you. I will not be long away. You will long for my return, even as my dear mother is longing now. My mother will be your mother, Meta; my home and country will be yours."

Meta was smiling now through her tears. What more was said, if anything, may never be known, but when Byarnie came floundering back with his pannikin of milk, he found his mistress and master, as he called them, both happy and gay, and wondered at this very much, because he had left them both sad and quiet.

A little Norse maiden knelt in prayer that night beside her dimity-curtained bed, and thanked the kind Father for the hope and joy of pure love, the hope that as she had a mother in heaven, she yet might have one on earth as well.

And Claude's yacht spread her wings to the breeze, and south and south she flew. Past the Westmann Isles, past lonely Stramoe, past the rugged Faroes, past the Shetlands, past the Hebrides themselves.

And now Claude slackens sail His men notice that he is no longer so buoyant and happy. He treads the deck with a quicker step, as if to keep time with those thoughts.

"Oh?" he was saying to himself, "what will mother say? How will mother take it? How will the proud Lady Alwyn look, when I tell her I am betrothed to a simple Iceland maiden?"

CHAPTER FIVE.

"WILL HE NEVER COME AGAIN?"

Not since the bright old days before the death of Claude's father had Dunallan Towers looked so cheerful as it did the week before the arrival of the wanderer himself in Glasgow waters.

"I believe my boy will come to-day," Lady Alwyn would remark to her maid.