In the Land of the Great Snow Bear Part 8

There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart.

"Then," he said, "you do not, you cannot lo--"

"Stay!" she interrupted; "stay, Claude, stay!" She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. "I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet."

The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time--spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now.

"Sit down, dear Meta," he said at last; "we still are lovers."

"Yes," in a low, sad voice.

"Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, 'Till frozen seas do meet'?"

"There is a legend," she replied, "that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. _I_ do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that s.h.i.+ps would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then _the frozen seas would meet_, and this world would be all one s.h.i.+ning ball of ice-clad snow.

But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt--the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,"--here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream--"and I will love you, Claude, _till frozen seas do_ meet."

Note 1. Bodies have been found frozen, and in perfect condition, after a lapse of nearly half a century.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE PARTING.

Among the Northern nations, especially the Norse, you meet types of men and women as utterly different from those of Southern climes as if they belonged to another sphere. The same blessed religion nevertheless binds us all with its golden chain. Natures like those of Meta and honest Byarnie--who, be it remembered, are not creatures of the imagination, but true examples of a cla.s.s--I have never met elsewhere.

The nearest approach to them in manners and ways of thinking, I have found in my own dear Highlands of Scotland.

Very many, both of the Norse, such as those met with in Shetland and Iceland, as well as our Highlanders, are very deeply imbued with the spirit and true sentiment of religion. It is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Religion is the weft in the beautiful web of such lives as these.

When women like Meta love it is very pure love, for the very reason I have stated, for Meta was not ashamed to go on her knees with her love.

A very peculiar girl, you say? Would to Heaven there were millions like her in this fair land of ours.

On the very evening of their reunion, Claude left his bride-elect, and went thundering away through the moonlight along the stony path on his sure-footed pony.

He would come again, next day or next, he told her, but duty was duty, and must be obeyed.

He was more happy than might be expected--happy because hopeful.

He found everything well on board, just as he had expected he would.

"I've engaged a few more hands, sir," the mate told him. "The right metal I like a mixture of nationalities, and yet I don't. Bother the foreign sc.u.m that they man British s.h.i.+ps with nowadays, sir, leaving honest English Jack on sh.o.r.e to starve.--But give me a crew like what we now have, sir--a crew mostly Scotch and English; then I say one or two Norwegians or Danes don't do much harm."

"Right, Mr Lloyd. And now I must tell you I am going to engage an extra hand. Can you make room?"

"Put him in a bunk, sir."

"A bunk, Mr Lloyd? He'd never be able to get in, and if he did he couldn't stick his legs out. He is seven feet high and over, and broad in proportion."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the mate. "But I have it, sir; I've got a hammock big enough to hold an elephant."

"That'll do. Good night, then."

As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram.

He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay--the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy.

He slept and dreamt about this.

Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony's hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude.

It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy.

"Have you got good news?" was Meta's first question.

She answered it herself before he got time to speak.

"Yes, you have," she said; "I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?"

Claude's face fell just a little.

"I wish it were," he replied. "No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram."

They went and sat down to read it.

"I don't like it," she said. "Why didn't she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!"

Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public doc.u.ment, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines.

Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening suns.h.i.+ne.

Claude laughed again, and caught her hand.

"I don't mean in that way, silly child," he said. "There; we will read between the words in the way I mean."

Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart--and a deal more I need not note.

"Don't you see, Meta?"

"Dark and dim, as through a gla.s.s," said Meta, musing. "Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy."

"Well, I am, because I feel she will relent."

"I wonder what she is doing now?"

And Meta's question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.

I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on suns.h.i.+ny days, and call him "Diogenes?" But here comes Janet at last.