Then, although grouse were wild, there were hares in plenty, and fish in the river ready to be wooed by the gentle art of so true a fisherman as Claude Alwyn. And the walking exercise, through the heather hills, the fresh air, and the balmy breath of pine trees, never failed to refresh and invigorate him both in mind and body, so that he always returned to dinner buoyant and hopeful. But ever at the breakfast-table there was that weary look of carking care in his face.
He would go no further, however, in explaining it than confessing he did not sleep very well at night.
"It is the change," he remarked, smiling, "from a hard mattress to one far too soft and luxuriant for a sailor. Besides, mother, I dare say I miss the motion of the ship."
His mother only sighed softly.
There came to Claude one night a dream as vivid as any reality. He was back again in Iceland. He was gazing on the face and form of her whom he loved, though she did not seem to see him. She was seated on a hill-top, a favourite spot, where beside her he had often sat, when the fields beneath were green, the far-off sea an azure blue, when wild birds sang above and around them, and the perfume of wild flowers filled the summer air.
But snow was all over the landscape now, save where dark rocks jutted through the white, and the ocean, foam-flecked, dashed high over the beetling cliffs. Yes, there sat Meta, but oh! the sad, sad look in those beautiful eyes! She opened her lips and spoke at last.
"No, no, no!" she murmured; "he will never come again."
He thought he sprang towards her, but she faded away like the mist from a geyser, and he was alone on the snow.
He slept no more that night. But he formed a resolve.
"No," he said to himself, "I am not a man; not a drop of proud Alwyn"s blood runs through my veins if I hesitate longer. It is a duty I owe to my mother and to her to speak my mind. Yes, Meta, I will come back again."
Were I an artist, I should delight in painting only beauty and peace: the fairest, holiest faces should be transferred to my canvas; the most smiling summer landscapes, the sunniest seas. But, alas! I am but an author, and no pen-and-ink depiction of life would be complete without the shade and shadow of sorrow.
I will not needlessly dwell on the interview that took place in the very room in which I am sitting writing now, between the proud Lady Alwyn and her son. Indeed, the interview was brief in itself: I have thus some excuse for being brevity personified in my description.
Pa.s.s we over, then, Claude"s introduction, his pa.s.sionate declaration of love for Meta, his glowing panegyrics on her person and mind, and even the statement that only his regard for his mother and fear of hurting her feelings caused him to conceal the truth so long from her, and then we come to the _denouement_.
"But, dearest mother, I now know and feel that your constant desire to do everything for my happiness will cause you to receive my Meta when I bring her home as my bride."
If she had been silent till now, it was because she seemed as if thunder-struck.
"My boy," she cried at last, "you are bewitched, or I am dreaming some hideous dream. Tell me it is all but an ill-timed joke. You are but a child--"
"I am a man."
"You have been deceived, put upon, tempted by a designing--"
"Hold, mother, hold! Though the few words you have uttered sound like the death-knell to hopes I have fondly cherished, go no further: forget not yourself so far as to speak one word against my bride-elect, lest I forget I am your son."
"My son? _My son_?" exclaimed the proud Lady of the Towers almost tragically. "Oh! would I could forget it, or that your ship had sunk in the blackest depths of ocean, rather than you had lived to bring this disgrace on the n.o.ble house of Alwyn."
"Enough, mother; I will hear no more. You have thwarted me in the dearest wish of my heart, you whose love for a son ought to have conquered family pride. You have thrust me from the halls of my ancestors. I go forth into the world of adventure. I will seek in ambition, in ceaseless change, the only possible balm for the sorrow I have in parting from you."
He turned on his heel as he spoke. He strode down the hall and through the avenue; he looked neither to right nor left, and never once behind him. His mother watched him with clasped hands, with anxious eyes, and with prayers on her pale and quivering lips.
"Would he turn? Surely, surely he would turn." But nay; the trees soon hid him from view--hid him, and lastly Fingal, who with tail and head bent low, as if he knew that sorrow had come, followed at young Claude"s heels.
"Widowed and childless!" These were her words as she sank apparently lifeless on the floor.
Janet, her maid, found her thus and lifted her gently on to the couch.
But when memory came back, no words her maid could utter could give comfort.
"I forgive him, Janet," she said, "as he will forgive me. It is fate.
He _may_ write, but he"ll _never_ return: too well do I know the pride of the Highland Alwyns. But, but, dear Janet,"--here all the woman"s nature gushed out in tears--"Janet," she sobbed, "poor Fingal--too-- has--gone."
Sorrow had fallen like a dark cloud on Dunallan Towers, a cloud that was deepened in its darkness when one morning Alba, the snow-bird, was missing. It was last seen flying listlessly around the great elm trees, then straight as lightning bearing northwards. It was Janet who saw it, and it seemed to say--
"I hear a voice you cannot hear, That bids me not to stay; I see a hand you cannot see, That beckons me away."
CHAPTER SIX.
"GRIEF IS THE PARENT OF FAME."
Claude was miles away from home ere he noticed faithful Fingal trotting near him.
His first thought was to order him back, but this poor dog, as if reading his mind, crouched low at his feet, looking beseechingly up.
"_This_ is my home," he appeared to plead.
Claude"s next thought was to _take_ him back; his mother might even ere now have relented. But that Highland pride, which has been at once the glory and the curse of Auld Scotland, stepped in and forbade.
Young Claude went on.
"Grief," says one of England"s greatest novelists--Lord Lytton--"is the parent of fame."
This is so true! Many and many a grief-stricken, sorrow-laden man and woman in this world would faint and fail and die, did they not fall back upon work to support them. This is the tonic that sustains tens of thousands of sorely stricken ones, until Time, the great healer, has a.s.suaged the floods of their sorrow.
Young though Claude was--but little more than twenty-one--he had already obtained some fame in the fields of literature. He had been a rover, and to some extent an explorer--more especially among those wild and lonely islands in the Norland Ocean. Nor had he been content to merely cruise around these, watching only the ever-changing hues of the ocean, or the play of sunshine and shade on bold bluff crags and terraced cliffs. No, for he was as much on sh.o.r.e as afloat, mingling among their peoples when peoples there were, mingling among the birds if they were the only inhabitants, studying flora, studying fauna, reading even the great book of the rocks, that told him so much, but never yet had caused him to waver in his belief in a Supreme Being, who made the sea and all that is in it, the land and all it contains.
He was a sportsman and naturalist; in fact, "a man of the world," in the only true and dignified sense of the term.
His was an original mind, and a deep-thinking one, so that the sketches of his life and travels which he had been in the habit of sending from time to time to the organs of higher-cla.s.s literature were sure to be welcome both to editors and readers.
He was, moreover, a student of Norse lore, and a speculator in the theories--many of them vague enough--concerning the mysterious regions that lie around the Arctic Pole. And it was his writings on these countries that first brought him into real notoriety among a cla.s.s of very worthy _savants_ who, though seldom too willing to venture into extreme danger themselves, are, to their credit be it said, never averse to spend money in fitting out ships of research.
On the very day of his rejoining his vessel at Glasgow, a letter was handed to him by his chief mate, inviting him to London on important business in connection with discovery in the Arctic regions.
Two hours afterwards Claude was seated in a flying train, whirling rapidly on towards the borders. In nine hours more he was in town.
Another half-hour brought him to a shipping office in Leadenhall Street.
"You are Captain Lord Alwyn?" said the grey-haired clerk, looking at him over the rims of a pair of golden spectacles.
"The same, at your service," returned Claude.
"We did not expect you quite so soon. But if you did come, I was told to hand you this note."
It was simply an invitation to dine with Professor Hodson and a few friends next evening at Richmond.