In the Land of the Great Snow Bear Part 9

"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 sh.e.l.l," 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?

CHAPTER TEN.

IN NORLAND SEAS.

"I shouldn't wonder if we get it from out yonder," said Dr Barrett, pointing away south and by west, the very direction in which the _Icebear_ was steaming.

There was a great billowy heave on the blue sea, blue everywhere, except where the light shadow of some white fleecy cloud made a patch of fleeting grey or grey-green. There was not a breath of wind "to swear by," as Jack Scott unpoetically put it, so the long rolling swell was as smooth as gla.s.s. This swell was meeting them too, and the ship rose and fell on it with a gentle dipping motion; only now and then, when a taller wave than usual dipped in under bows and keel, she gave a quick plunge forward.

Along the horizon ahead was a bank of rock-and-castle clouds, while far away astern the jagged snowcapped peaks of Iceland were just visible above the rolling seas.

Flocks of malleys, shrill-screaming kittywakes, and different kinds of seagulls were tacking and half-tacking round the vessel, afar off, and the dark and ominous-like skua waited his chance to rob the malleys of whatever they might happen to pick up.

"Yes," the surgeon said; "I think we'll have it out of yonder."

"Seems so to me, too," said Claude. "We are all ready for a blow, Mr Lloyd?"

Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled.

"Ay, sir," he replied, "all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I've come through in these lat.i.tudes, and higher up North too."

These officers were on the bridge.

This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on pa.s.senger steamers right amidships. No, the _Icebear's_ bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a bra.s.s one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast.

The gla.s.s was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun's rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves.

"Had we started sooner," remarked the doctor, "we would have been farther off the land ere now."