While he spoke, Mrs. Fairbrother tapped her foot impatiently, and then broke in with—
"Cut it short, sir. What do you want?"
Adam lifted his eyes with a stupefied look, and answered very quietly, "I want to come home, Ruth."
"Home!" cried Mrs. Fairbrother, sharply. "And what home if you please?"
Adam sat agape for a moment, and then said, speaking ascalmly as before, "What home, Ruth? Why, what home but this?"
"This, indeed! This is not your home," said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"Not my home!" said Adam, slowly, dropping back in his seat like one who isdumbfounded.
"Not my home! Did you say that this was not my home?" he said, suddenly bracing up. "Why, woman, I was born here; so was my father before me, and my father's father before him. Five generations of my people have lived and died here, and the very roof rafters over your head must know us."
"Hoity-toity!" cried Mrs. Fairbrother, "and if you had lived here much longer not a rafter of them all would have been left to shelter us. No, sir. I've kept the roof on this house, and it is mine."
"It is yours, indeed," said Adam slowly, "for I gave it you."
"You gave it me!" cried Mrs. Fairbrother. "Say I took it as my right when all that you had was slipping through your fingers like sand, as everything does that ever touches them."
At that hard word old Adam drew himself up with a great dignity of bearing, and said—
"There is one thing that has indeed slipped through my fingers like sand, and that is the fidelity of the woman who swore before God forty and odd years ago to love and honor me."
"Crinkleum-crankum!" cried Mrs. Fairbrother. "A pretty thing, truly, that I should toil and moil at my age to keep house and home together ready and waiting for you, when your zany doings have shut every other door against you. Misfortunes, indeed! A fine name for your mistakes!"
"I may have made mistakes, madam," said Adam; "but true it is, as the wise man has said, that he who has never made mistakes has never made anything."
"Tush!" said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"Ruth, do you refuse to take me in?" said Adam.
"This house is mine," said she; "mine by law and deed, as tight as wax can make it."
"Do you refuse to take me in?" said Adam again, rising to his feet.
"You have brought ruin on yourself by your shilly-shallyand vain folly," said she; "and now you think to pat your nose and say your prayers by my fireside."
"Ruth," said Adam once more, "do you refuse to take me in?"
"Yes, and that I do," said she. "You would beggar me as you have beggared yourself, but that I warrant you never shall."
Then there was a grim silence for a moment. Old Adam gripped convulsively the staff he leaned on, and all but as loud as the ticking of the clock was the beating of his heart.
"God give me patience," he said. "Yes, I'll bear it meekly. Ruth," he said, huskily, "I'll not trouble you. Make yourself sure of that. While there's a horse-wallet to hang on my old shoulders, and a bit of barley bread to put in it, I'll rove the country round, but I'll never come on my knees to you and say, 'I am your husband, I gave you all you had, and you are rich and I'm a beggar, and I am old—give me for charity my bed and board.'"
But, unable to support any longer the strife for mastery that was tearing at his heart, he gave way to his wrath, and cried out in a loud voice, "Out on you, woman! Out on you! God forgive me the evil day I set eyes on you! God forgive me the damned day I took you to my breast to rend it."
While this had been going forward Greeba had stood silent at the back of her father's chair, with eyelashes quivering and the fingers of both hands clenched together. But now she stepped forward and said, "Forgive him, mother. Do not be angry with him. He will be sorry for what he has said: I'm sure he will. But only think, dear mother: he is in great, great trouble, and he is past work, and if this is not his home, then he is homeless."
And at the sound of that pleading voice Adam's wrath turned in part to tenderness, and he dropped back to the chair and began to weep.
"I am ashamed of my tears, child," he said; "but they are not shed for myself. Nor did I come here for my own sake, though your mother thinks I did. No, child, no; say no more. I'll repent me of nothing I have said to her—no, not one word. She is a hard, a cruel woman; but, thank heaven, I have my sons left to me yet. She is not flesh of my flesh, though one with me in wedlock; but they are, they will never see their father turned from the door."
At that instant three of the six Fairbrothers, Asher, Ross and Thurstan, came in from the stackyard, with the smell of the furze-rick upon them that they had been trimming for the cattle. And Adam, without waiting to explain, cried in the fervor of his emotion, "This is not your will, Asher?" Whereupon Asher, without any salutation, answered him, "I don't know what you mean, sir," and turned aside.
"He has damned your mother," said Mrs. Fairbrother, with her morning apron to her eyes, "and cursed the day he married her."
"But she is turning me out of the house," said Adam. "This house—my father's house."
"Ask her pardon, sir," Asher muttered, "and she will take you back."
"Her pardon! God in heaven!" Adam cried.
"You are an old man now, sir," said Thurstan.
"So I am; so I am," said Adam.
"And you are poor as well."
"That's true, Thurstan; that's true, though your brother forgets it."
"So you should not hold your head too high."
"What! Are you on her side, also? Asher, Thurstan, Ross, you are my sons—would you see me turned out of the house?"
The three men hung their heads. "What mother says he must agree to," muttered Asher.
"But I gave you all I had," said Adam. "If I am old I am your father, and if I am poor you know best who made me so."
"We are poor, too, sir; we have nothing, and we do not forget who is to blame for it," Thurstan growled.
"You gave everything away from us," grumbled Ross; "and, because your bargain is a rue bargain, you want us now to stand aback of you."
And Stean, and Jacob, and John coming in at that moment, Jacob said, very slyly, with something like a sneer—
"Ah, yes, and who took the side of a stranger against his own children? What of your good Michael Sunlocks now, sir? Is he longing for you? Or have you never had the scribe of a line from him since he turned his back on you, four years ago?"
Then Greeba's eyes flashed with anger. "For shame,"she cried, "for shame! Oh, you mean, pitiful men, to bait and badger him like this."
Jacob threw up his head and laughed, and Mrs. Fairbrother said, "Chut, girl, you're waxing apace with your big words, considering you're a chit that has wasted her days in London and hasn't learned to muck a byre yet."
Adam did not hear her. He sat like a man who is stunned by a heavy blow. "Not for myself," he mumbled, "no, not for myself, though they all think it." Then he turned to his sons and said, "You think I came to beg for bed and board for myself, but you are wrong. I came to demand it for the girl. I may have no claim upon you, but she has, for she is one with you all and can ask for her own. She has no home with her father now, for it seems that he has none for himself; but her home is here, and here I mean to leave her."
"Not so fast, sir," said John. "All she can ever claim is what may one day be hers when we ourselves come into anything. Meantime, like her brothers, she has nothing but what she works for."
"Works for, you wagtail?" cried Adam; "she is a woman! Do you hear?—a woman?"
"Woman or man, where's the difference here?" said Gentleman John, and he snapped his fingers.
"Where's the difference, you jackanapes? Do you ask me where's the difference here? Here? In grace, in charity, in unselfishness, in faith in the good; in fidelity to the true, in filial love and duty! There's the difference, you jackanapes."
"You are too old to quarrel with, sir; I will spare you," said Gentleman John.
"Spare me, you whipper-snapper!Youwill spareme! But oh, let me have patience! If I have cursed the day I first saw my wife let me not also curse the hour when she first bore me children and my heart was glad. Asher, you are my firstborn, and heaven knows what you were to me. You will not stand by and listen to this. She is your sister, my son. Think of it—your only sister."
Asher twisted about, where he sat by the window nook, pretending to doze, and said, "The girl is nothing to me. She is nothing to any of us. She has been with you all the days of her life except such as you made her to spend with strangers. She is no sister of ours."
Then Adam turned to Ross, "And do you say the same?" he asked.
"What can she do here?" said Ross. "Nothing. This is no place for your great ladies. We work, here, every man and woman of us, from daylight to dark, in the fields and the dairy. Best send her back to her fine friends in London."
"Ay," said Jacob, glancing up with a brazen smile into Greeba's face, "or marry her straight off—that is the shortest way. I heard a little bird tell of someone who might have her. Don't look astonished, Miss, for I make no doubt you know who it is. He is away on the mountains now, but he'll be home before long."
Greeba's eyes glistened, but not a muscle of her countenance changed. Only she clutched at the back of her father's chair and clung to it. And Adam, struggling hard to master the emotion that made his whole body to sway and tremble in his seat, said slowly, "If she is not your sister, at least she is your mother's daughter, and a mother knows what that means." Then turning to Mrs. Fairbrother, who still stood apart with her housewife's apron to her eyes, he said, "Ruth, the child is your daughter, and by that deed you speak of she is entitled to her share of all that is here——"
"Yes," said Mrs. Fairbrother, sharply, "but only when I am done with it."
"Even so," said Adam, "would you see the child want before that, or drive her into any marriage, no matter what?"
"I will take her," said Mrs. Fairbrother deliberately, "on one condition."
"What is it, Ruth?" said Adam; "name it, that I may grant it."
"That you shall give up all control of her, and that she shall give up all thought of you."
"What?"
"That you shall never again expect to see her or hear from her, or hold commerce of any kind with her."
"But why? Why?"
"Because I may have certain plans for her future welfare that you might try to spoil."
"Do they concern Michael Sunlocks?"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Fairbrother, with a toss of the head.
"Then they concern young Jason, the Icelander," said Adam.
"If so, it ismyconcernment," said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"And that is your condition?"
"Yes."
"And you ask me to part from her forever? Think of it, she is my only daughter. She has been the light of my eyes. You have never loved her as I have loved her. You know it is the truth. And you ask me to see her no more, and never more to hear from her. Now, God punish you for this, you cold-hearted woman!"
"Take care, sir. Fewer words, or mayhap I will recall my offer. If you are wise you will be calm for the girl's sake."
"You are right," he said, with his head down. "It is not for me to take the bread out of my child's mouth. She shall choose for herself."
Then he twisted about to where Greeba stood in silence behind his chair. "Greeba," he said, with a world of longing in his eyes, "my darling, you see how it is. I am old and very poor, and heaven pity my blind folly, I have no home to offer you, for I have none to shelter my own head. Don't fear for me, for I have no fear for myself. I will be looked to in the few days that remain to me, and, come what may, the sorry race of my foolish life will soon be over. But you have made no mistakes that merit my misfortunes. So choose, my child, choose. It is poverty with me or plenty with your mother. Choose, my child, choose; and let it be quickly, let it be quickly, for my old heart is bursting."
Then the brave girl drew herself proudly up, her brilliant eyes aflame, and her whole figure erect and quivering.
"Choose?" she cried, in a piercing voice; "there is no choice. I will go with my father, and follow him over the world, though we have no covering but the skies above us."
And then Adam leapt from his chair to his feet, and the infirmity of his years seemed gone in an instant, and his wet face shone with the radiance of a great joy. "Do you hear that, you people?" he cried. "There's grace, and charity, and unselfishness, and love left in the world still. Thank heaven, I have not yet to curse the day her body brought forth children. Come, Greeba, we will go our ways, and God's protection will go with us. 'I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"
He strode across to the door, then stopped and looked back to where his sons stood together with the looks of whipped dogs.
"And you, you unnatural sons," he cried, "I cast you out of my mind. I give you up to your laziness and drunkenness and vain pleasures. I am going to one who is not flesh of my flesh, and yet he is my son indeed."
Again he made for the door, and stopped on the threshold, and faced about towards his wife. "As for you, woman, your time will come. Remember that! Remember that!"
Greeba laid one hand softly on his shoulder and said, "Come, father, come," but again he looked back at his sons and said, "Farewell, all of you! Farewell! You will see me no more. May a day like this that has come to your father never, never come to you."
And then all his brave bearing, his grand strength broke down in a moment, and as the girl laid hold of his arm, lest he should reel and fall, he stumbled out at the threshold, sobbing beneath his breath, "Sunlocks, my boy; Sunlocks, I am coming to you—I am coming to you."
Chalse A'Killey followed them out, muttering in an under-breath some deep imprecations that no one heeded. "Strange," said he, "the near I was to crucifying the Lord afresh and swearing a mortal swear, only I remembered my catechism and the good John Wesley."
At the gate to the road they met Jason, who was coming down from Barrule with birds at his belt. With bewildered looks Jason stood and looked at them as they came up, a sorry spectacle, in the brightness of the midday sun. Old Adam himself strode heavily along, with his face turned down and his white hair falling over his cheeks. By his side Greeba walked bearing herself as proudly as she might, with her head thrown back and her wet eyes trying hard to smile. A pace or two behind came Chalse with his pony and cart grunting hoarsely in his husky throat. Not a word of greeting did they give to Jason, and he asked for no explanation, for he saw it all after a moment: they being now homeless had drifted back to their old home and had just been turned away from it. And not a word of pity did he on his part dare to offer them, but in the true sympathy of silence he stepped up to Adam and gave him his strong arm to lean upon, and then turned himself about to go their way.
They took the road to Ramsey, and little was said by anyof them throughout the long two miles of the journey, save only by Chalse, who never ceased to mutter dark sayings to himself, whereof the chief were praises to God for delivering them without loss of life or limb or hand or even out of a den of lions, for, thanks be to the Lord! He had drawn their teeth.
Now though the world is hard enough on a good man in the hour of his trouble, there are ever more tender hearts to compassionate his distresses than bitter ones to triumph over his adversity, and when Adam Fairbrother came to Ramsey many a door was thrown open to him by such as were mindful of his former state and found nothing in his fall to merit their resentment. No hospitality would he accept, however, but took up his abode with Greeba in a little lodging in the market place, with its face to the cross and its back towards the sea. And being safely housed there, he thanked Jason at the door for the help of his strong arm, and bade him come again at ten o'clock that night, if so be that he was in the way of doing a last service for a poor soul who might never again have it in his power to repay. "I'll come back at ten," said Jason, simply, and so he left them for the present.
And when he was gone Adam said to Greeba as he turned indoors, "A fine lad that, and as simple as a child, but woe to the man who deceives him. Ay, or to the woman either. But you'll never do it, girl? Eh? Never? Never?"
"Why, father, what can you mean? Are we not going away together?" said Greeba.
"True, child, true," said Adam; and so without further answer to her question, twice repeated, he passed with her into the house.
But Adam had his meaning as well as his reason for hiding it. Through the silent walk from Lague he had revolved their position and come to a fixed resolution concerning it. In the heat of his emotion it had lifted up his heart that Greeba had chosen poverty with him before plenty with her mother and her brothers, but when his passion had cooled he rebuked himself for permitting her to do so. What right had he to drag her through the slough of his own necessities! He was for going away, not knowing the fate that was before him, but on what plea made to his conscience dare he take her with him? He was old, his life was behind him, and, save herself, he had no ties. Whatdid it matter to him how his struggle should end? But she was young, she was beautiful, she might form new friendships, the world was before her, the world might yet be at her feet, and life, so sweet and so sad, and yet so good a thing withal, was ready and waiting for her.
Once he thought of Michael Sunlocks, and that the arms that would be open to himself in that distant land would not be closed to Greeba. And once he thought of Jason, and that to leave her behind was to help the schemes that would bring them together. But put it as he would, no farther could he get than this, that she must stay, and he must go away alone.
Yet, knowing the strength of her purpose, he concealed his intention, and his poor bewildered old head went about its work of preparation very artfully. It was Friday, and still not far past noon, when they reached their lodging by the cross. After a hasty meal he set out into the town, leaving Greeba to rest, for she had walked far since early morning. At the quay he inquired the date of a vessel that called there sometimes in summer on its passage from Ireland to Iceland, and to his surprise he found that she was even then in the harbor, and would go out with the first tide of the next day, which would flow at one o'clock in the morning.
Thereupon he engaged his berth, and paid for his passage. It cost six pounds, besides a daily charge of four shillings for rations. The trip was calculated to last one month with fair wind and weather, such as then promised. Adam counted the cost, and saw that with all present debts discharged, and future ones considered, he might have somewhat between six and seven pounds in his pocket when he set foot in Reykjavik. Being satisfied with this prospect, he went to the High Bailiff for his license to leave the island.
Greeba had heard nothing of this, and as soon as night fell in she went up to bed at her father's entreaty. Her room was at the back of the house and looked out over the sea, and there she saw the young moon rise over the waters as she undressed and laid down to sleep.
Prompt to his hour Jason came, and then Adam told him all.
"I am going away," he said, "far away, indeed into your own country. I go to-night, though my daughter, who is asleep, knows nothing of my intention. Will you do me a service?"
"Try me," said Jason.
And then Adam asked him to stay in Ramsey over night, that he might be there when Greeba came down in the morning, to break the news to her that her father had gone, and to take her back with him to Lague.
"They will not say no to her, seeing her father is not with her; and the time is coming when she will hold her right to a share of all they have, and none of them dare withhold it."
Jason who had been up to Lague, had heard of all that had passed there, and played his own part too, though he said nothing of that. He was now visibly agitated. His calm strength had left him. His eyes were afire, his face twitched, his hands trembled, and he was plainly struggling to say what his quivering lips refuse to utter.
"Is there no other way?" he asked. "Must she go back to Lague? Is there no help for it?"
"None," said Adam; "for she is penniless, God forgive me, and beggars may not be choosers."
At that word Jason was unable to support any longer the wild laboring of his heart.
"Yes, yes, but thereisa way," he cried, "for there is one to whom she is rich enough though he is poor himself, for he would give his life's blood if so be that he could buy her. Many a day he has seen all and stood aside and been silent, because afraid to speak, but he must speak now, or never."
Hearing this, Adam's face looked troubled, and he answered—
"I will not misdoubt you, my good lad, or question whom you mean."
And Jason's tongue being loosed at last, the hot words came from him like a flood.
"I have been an idle fellow, sir, I know that; good for nothing in the world, any more than the beasts of the field, and maybe it's because I've had nobody but myself to work for; but give me the right to stand beside her and you shall see what I can do, for no brother shall return her cold looks for her sweetness, and never again shall she go back where she will only be despised."
"You are a brave lad, Jason," said Adam, as best he could for the tears that choked him; "and though I have long had other thoughts concerning her, yet could I trust her to your love and keeping and go my ways with content.But no, no, my lad, it is not for me to choose for her; and neither is for her to choose now."
Pacified by that answer Jason gave his promise freely, faithfully to do what Adam had asked of him. And the night being now well worn towards midnight, with the first bell of the vessel rung, and old Chalse fussing about in busy preparation, the time had come for Adam to part from Greeba. To bid her farewell was impossible, and to go away without doing so was well-nigh as hard. All he could do was to look upon her in her sleep and whisper his farewell in his heart. So he entered on tiptoe the room where she lay. Softly the moon shone through the window from across the white sea, and fell upon the bed. Pausing at the door he listened for her breathing, and at last he heard it, for the night was very still, and only by the sea's gentle plash on the beach was the silence broken. Treading softly he approached the bedside, and there she lay, and the quiet moonlight lay over her—the dear, dear girl, so brave and happy-hearted. Her lips seemed to smile; perhaps she was dreaming. He must take his last look now. Yet no, he must kiss her first. He reached across and lightly touched her pure forehead with his lips. Then she moved and moaned in her sleep, and then her peaceful breathing came again. "Now, peace be with her," Adam murmured, "and the good hand to guard her of the good Father of all."
So Adam Fairbrother went his way, leaving Greeba behind him, and early the next morning Jason took her back to Lague.
Now the one thing that Jason did not tell to Adam Fairbrother was that, on hearing from Jacob, as spokesman of his brothers, the story of their treatment of Greeba and their father, he had promised to break every bone in their six worthless bodies, and vowed never to darken their door again. His vow he could not keep if he was also to keep his word with Adam, and he deferred the fulfilment of his promise; but from that day he left Lague as a home, andpitched his tent with old Davy Kerruish in Maughold village, at a little cottage by the Sundial that stood by the gates of the church. Too old for the sea, and now too saintly for smuggling, Davy pottered about the churchyard as gravedigger—for Maughold had then no sexton—with a living of three and sixpence a service, and a marvellously healthy parish. So the coming of Jason to share bed and board with him was a wild whirl of the wheel of fortune, and straightway he engaged an ancient body at ninepence a week to cook and clean for them.
By this time Jason had spent nearly half his money, for he had earned nothing, but now he promptly laid his idle habits aside. No more did he go up to the mountains, and no longer out on to the sea. His nets were thrown over the lath of the ceiling, his decoy was put in a cage, his fowling piece stood in the corner, and few were the birds that hung at his belt. He was never seen at the "Hibernian," and he rarely scented up the house with tobacco smoke. On his first coming he lay two days and nights in bed without food or sleep, until Davy thought surely he was sick, and, willy-nilly, was for having his feet bathed in mustard and hot water, and likewise his stomach in rum and hot gruel. But he was only settling his plans for the future, and having hit on a scheme he leaped out of bed like a grayhound, plunged his head up to the neck in a bucket of cold water, came out of it with gleaming eyes, red cheeks and a vapor rising from his wet skin, and drying himself with a whir on a coarse towel, he laid hold with both hands of a chunk of the last hare he had snared, and munched it in vast mouthfuls.
"Davy," he cried, with the white teeth still going, "are there many corn mills this side of the island?"
"Och, no, boy," said Davy; "but scarce as fresh herrings at Christmas."
"Any mill nearer than old Moore's at Sulby, and Callow's wife's down at Laxey?"
"Aw, no, boy, the like of them isn't in."
"Any call for them nearer, Davy?"
"Aw 'deed, yes, boy, yes; and the farmer men alwis keen for one in Maughold, too. Ay, yes, keen, boy, keen; and if a man was after building one here they'd be thinking diamonds of him."
"Then why hasn't somebody set up a mill before now, Davy?"
"Well, boy, ye see a Manxman is just the cleverest of all the people goin' at takin' things aisy. Aw, clever at it, boy, clever!"
There is a full stream of water that tumbles into the sea over the brows of Port-y-Vullin, after singing its way down from the heights of Barrule. Jason had often marked it as he came and went from the hut of Stephen Orry that contained his stuffed birds, and told himself what a fine site it was for anybody that wanted to build a water mill. He remembered it now with a freshened interest, and bowling away to Mrs. Fairbrother at Lague for the purchase of a rod of the land that lay between the road and the beach, to the Bailiff for the right of water, and to old Coobragh for the hire of a cart to fetch stones from the screes where the mountains quarried them, he was soon in the thick of his enterprise.
He set the carpenter to work at his wheel, the smith at his axle, and the mason at his stones, but for the walls and roof of the mill itself he had no help but old Davy's. Early and late, from dawn to dusk, he worked at his delving and walling, and when night fell in he leaned over the hedge and smoked and measured out with his eye the work he meant to do next day. When his skill did not keep pace with his ardor he lay a day in bed thinking hard, and then got up and worked yet harder. In less than two months he had his first roof—timbers well and safely pitched, and if he went no farther it was because the big hope wherewith his simple heart had been buoyed up came down with a woeful crash.
"Aw, smart and quick, astonishin'," said old Davy of Jason to Mrs. Fairbrother at Lague. "Aw 'deed, yes, and clever to, and steady still. The way he works them walls is grand. I'll go bail the farming men will be thinking diamonds of him when he makes a start."
"And then I wouldn't doubt but he'll be in the way of making a fortune, too," said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"I wouldn' trust, I wouldn' trust," said Davy.
"And he'll be thinking of marrying, I suppose. Isn't he, Davy?" said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"Marrying, is it?" said Davy; "aw, divil a marry, ma'am. The boy's innocent. Aw, yes, innocent as a baby."
Mrs. Fairbrother had her own good reasons for thinking otherwise, though Jason came to Lague but rarely. So with hint and innuendo she set herself to see how Greebastood towards the future she had planned for her. And Greeba was not slow to see her mother's serious drift under many a playful speech. She had spent cheerful hours at Lague since the sad surprise that brought her back. Little loth for the life of the farm, notwithstanding Ross's judgment, she had seemed to fall into its ways with content. Her mother's hints touched her not at all, for she only laughed at them with a little of her old gayety; but one day within the first weeks she met Jason, and then she felt troubled. He was very serious, and spoke only of what he was doing, but before his grave face her gay friendliness broke down in an instant.
Hurrying home she sat down and wrote a letter to Michael Sunlocks. Never a word had she heard from him since he left the island four years ago, so she made excuse of her father's going away to cover her unmaidenly act, and asked him to let her know if her father had arrived, and how he was and where, with some particulars of himself also, and whether he meant to come back to the Isle of Man, or had quite made his home in Iceland; with many a sly glance, too, at her own condition, such as her modesty could not forbear, but never a syllable about Jason, for a double danger held her silent on that head. This she despatched to him, realizing at length that she loved him, and that she must hear from him soon, or be lost to him forever.
And waiting for Michael's answer she avoided Jason. If she saw him on the road she cut across the fields, and if he came to the house she found something to take her out of the kitchen. He saw her purpose quickly, and his calm eyes saddened, and his strong face twitched, but he did not flinch; he went on with his work, steadily, earnestly, only with something less of heart, something less of cheer. Her mother saw it, too, and then the playful hints changed to angry threats.
"What has he done?" said Mrs. Fairbrother.
"Nothing," said Greeba.
"Have you anything against him?"
"No."
"Then why are you driving him from the house?"
Greeba could make no answer.
"Are you thinking of someone else?"
Again Greeba was silent.
"I'll beg of you to mend your manners," cried Mrs. Fairbrother. "It's full time you were wedded and gone."
"But perhaps I don't wish to leave home," said Greeba.
"Tush!" said Mrs. Fairbrother. "The lad is well enough, and if he hasn't land he has some money, and is like to have more. I'll give you a week to think of it, and if he ever comes and speaks for you I'll ask you to give him his civil answer. You will be three and twenty come Martinmas, and long before your mother was as old as that she had a couple of your brothers to fend for."
"Some of my brothers are nearly twice my age, and you don't ask them to marry," said Greeba.
"That's a different matter," said Mrs. Fairbrother.
It turned out that the week was more than enough to settle the difference between Greeba and her mother, for in less time than that Mrs. Fairbrother was stricken down by a mortal illness. It was only a month since she had turned Adam from her door, but her time was already at hand, and more than he predicted had come to pass. She had grown old without knowing a day's illness; her body, like a rocky headland that gives no sign of the seasons, had only grown harder every year, with a face more deeply seamed; but when she fell it was at one blow of life's ocean. Three little days she had lost appetite, on the morning of the fourth day she had found a fever in a neglected cattle trough that had drained into the well, and before night she had taken her death-warrant.
She knew the worst, and faced it, but her terror was abject. Sixty-five years she had scraped and scratched, but her time was come. She had thought of nothing save her treasure, and there it lay, yet it brought her no solace.
Two days she tossed in agony, remembering the past, and the price she had paid, and made others to pay, for all that she had held so dear and must leave so soon, for now it was nothing worth. Then she sent for the parson, Parson Gell, who was still living, but very old. The good man came, thinking his mission was spiritual comfort, but Mrs. Fairbrother would hear nothing of that. As she had lived without God in the world, even so did she intend to die. But some things that had gone amiss with her in her eager race after riches she was minded to set right before her time came to go. In lending she had charged too high an interest; in paying she had withheld too much for money; in seizing for mortgage she had given too little grace. So she would repay before it was too late, for Death was opening her hands.
"Send for them all," she cried; "there's Kinvig of Ballagawne, and Corlett's widow at Ballacreggan, and Quirk of Claughbane, and the children of Joughan the weaver at Sherragh Vane, and Tubman of Ginger Hall, and John-Billy-Bob at Cornah Glen, and that hard bargainer, old Kermode of Port-e-chee. You see, I remember them all, for I never forget anything. Send for them, and be quick fetching them, or it'll be waste of time for them to come."
"I'll do it, Mistress Fairbrother," mumbled the old parson through his toothless gums, "for right is right, and justice justice."
"Chut!" said Mrs. Fairbrother.
But the parson's deaf ears did not hear. "And, ah!" he said, "the things of this world seem worthless, do they not, when we catch a glimpse into eternity?"
"Less cry and more wool," said Mrs. Fairbrother, dryly. "I wouldn't trust but old as you are you'd look with more love on a guinea than the Gospel calls for."
The people answered the parson's summons quickly enough, and came to Lague next morning, the men in their rough beavers, the old women in their long blue cloaks, and they followed the old parson into Mrs. Fairbrother's room, whispering among themselves, some in a doleful voice others in an eager one, some with a cringing air, and others with an arrogant expression. The chamber was darkened by a heavy curtain over the window, but they could see Mrs. Fairbrother propped up by pillows, whereon her thin, pinched, faded face showed very white. She had slept never a moment of the night; and through all the agony of her body her mind had been busy with its reckonings. These she had made Greeba to set down in writing, and now with the paper on the counterpane before her, and a linen bag of money in her hand, she sat ready to receive her people. When they entered there was deep silence for a moment, wherein her eyes glanced over them, as they stood in their strong odors of health around her.
"Where's your brother, Liza Joughan?" she said to a young woman at the foot of the bed.
"Gone off to 'Meriky ma'am," the girl faltered, "for he couldn't live after he lost the land."
"Where's Quirk of Claughbane?" asked Mrs. Fairbrother, turning to the parson.
"The poor man's gone, sister," said the parson, in a low tone. "He died only the week before last."
Mrs. Fairbrother's face assumed a darker shade, and she handed the paper to Greeba.
"Come, let's have it over," she said, and then, one by one, Greeba read out the names.
"Daniel Kinvig, twelve pounds," Greeba read, and thereupon an elderly man with a square head stepped forward.
"Kinvig," said Mrs. Fairbrother, fumbling the neck of the linen bag, "you borrowed a hundred pounds for two years, and I charged you twelve per cent. Six per cent. was enough, and here is the difference back to your hand."
So saying, she counted twelve pound notes and held them out in her wrinkled fingers, and the man took them without a word.
"Go on," she cried, sharply.
"Mrs. Corlett, two pounds," read Greeba, and a woman in a widow's cap and a long cloak came up, wiping her eyes.
"Bella Corlett," said Mrs. Fairbrother, "when I took over Ballacreggan for my unpaid debt, you begged for the feather bed your mother died on and the chair that had been your father's. I didn't give them, though I had enough besides, so here are two pounds to you, and God forgive me."
The woman took the money and began to cry.
"God reward you," she whimpered. "It's in Heaven you'll be rewarded, ma'am."
But Mrs. Fairbrother brushed her aside, with an angry word and a fretful gesture, and called on Greeba for the next name on the list.
"Peter Kermode, twenty-four pounds ten shillings," read Greeba, and a little old man, with a rough head and a grim, hard, ugly face, jostled through the people about him.
"Kermode," said Mrs. Fairbrother, "you always tried to cheat me, as you try to cheat everybody else, and when you sold me those seventy sheep for six shillings apiece last back end you thought they were all taking the rot, and you lost thirty pounds by them and brought yourself to beggary, and serve you right, too. But I sold them safe and sound for a pound apiece three days after; so here's half of the difference, and just try to be honest for the rest of your days. And it won't be a long task, either, for it's plain to see you're not far from death's door, and it isn't worth while to be a blood-sucker."
At that she paused for breath, and to press her lean hand over the place of the fire in her chest.
"Ye say true, ma'am, aw, true, true," said the man, in a lamentable voice. "And in the house of death it must be a great consolation to do right. Let's sing wi' ye, ma'am. I'm going in the straight way myself now, and plaze the Lord I'll backslide no more."
And while he counted out the money in his grimy palm, the old hypocrite was for striking up a Ranter hymn, beginning—
"Oh, this is the God we adore,Our faithful, unchangeable friend."
"Oh, this is the God we adore,Our faithful, unchangeable friend."
But Mrs. Fairbrother cried on him to be silent, and then gathering strength she went on with the others until all were done. And passing to each his money, as the grasp of Death's own hand relaxed the hard grip of her tight fingers, she trembled visibly, held it out and drew it back again, and held it out again, as though she were reluctant to part with it even yet.
And when all was over she swept the people out of the room with a wave of her hand, and fell back to the bolster.
Then Greeba, thinking it a favorable moment to plead for her father, mentioned his name, and eyed her mother anxiously. Mrs. Fairbrother seemed not to hear at first, and, being pressed, she answered wrathfully, saying she had no pity for her husband, and that not a penny of her money should go to him.
But late the same day, after the doctor, who had been sent for from Douglas, had wagged his head and made a rueful face over her, she called for her sons, and they came and stood about her, and Greeba, who had nursed her from the beginning, was also by her side.
"Boys," she said, between fits of pain, "keep the land together, and don't separate; and mind you bring no women here or you'll fall to quarrelling, and if any of you must marry let him have his share and go. Don't forget the heifer that's near to calving, and see that you fodder her every night. Fetch the geese down from Barrule at Martinmas, and count the sheep on the mountains once a week, for the people of Maughold are the worst thieves in the island."
They gave her their promise duly to do and not to do what she had named, and, being little used to such scenes, they grew uneasy and began to shamble out.
"And, boys, another thing," she said, faintly, stretching her wrinkled hand across the counterpane, "give the girl her rights, and let her marry whom she will."
This, also, they promised her; and then she, thinking her duty done as an honest woman towards man and the world, but recking nothing of higher obligations, lay backward with a groan.
Now it did not need that the men should marry in order that they might quarrel, for hardly was the breath out of their mother's body when they set to squabbling, without any woman to help them. Asher grumbled that Thurstan was drunken, Thurstan grumbled that Asher was lazy, Asher retorted that, being the eldest son, if he had his rights he would have every foot of the land, and Ross and Stean arose in fury at the bare thought of either beinghandson their brother's farm or else taking the go-by at his hands. So they quarrelled, until Jacob said that there was plainly but one way of peace between them, and that was to apportion the land into equal parts and let every man take his share, and then the idleness of Asher and the drunkenness of Thurstan would be to each man his own affair. At that they remembered that the lands of Lague, then the largest estate on the north of the island, had once been made up of six separate farms, with a house to each of them, though five of the six houses had long stood empty. And seeing that there were just six of themselves it seemed, as Jacob said, as if Providence had so appointed things to see them out of their difficulty. But the farms, though of pretty equal acreage, were of various quality of land, and therein the quarrelling set in afresh.
"I'll take Ballacraine," said Thurstan.
"No, but I'll take it," said Jacob, "for I've always worked the meadows."
In the end they cast lots, and then, each man having his farm assigned to him, all seemed to be settled when Asher cried.
"But what about the girl?"
At that they looked stupidly into each other's faces, for never once in all their bickering had they given a thought to Greeba. But Jacob's resource was not yet at an end, for he suggested that Asher should keep her at Lague, and at harvest the other five should give her something, and that her keep and their gifts together should be her share; and if she had all she needed what more could she wish?
They did not consult Greeba on this head, and before she had time to protest they were in the thick of a fresh dispute among themselves. The meadow lands of Ballacraine had fallen to Jacob after all, while Thurstan got the high and stony lands of Ballafayle, at the foot of Barrule. Thurstan was less than satisfied, and remembering that Jacob had drawn out the papers for the lottery, he suspected cheating. So he made himself well and thoroughly drunk at the "Hibernian," and set off for Ballacraine to argue the question out. He found Jacob in no mood for words of recrimination, and so he proceeded to thrash him, and to turn him off the fat lands and settle himself upon them.
Then there was great commotion among the Fairbrothers, and each of the other four took a side in the dispute. The end of it all was a trial for ejectment atDeemster'sCourt at Ramsey, and another for assault and battery. The ejectment came first and Thurstan was ousted, and then six men of Maughold got up in the juror's box to try the charge of assault. There was little proof but a multitude of witnesses, and before all were heard the Deemster adjourned the court for lunch and ventilation, for the old courthouse had become poisonous with the reeking breath of the people that crowded it.
And the jury being free to lunch where they pleased, each of the parties to the dispute laid hold of his man and walked him off by himself, to persuade him, also to treat him, and perhaps to bribe him. Thus Thurstan was at the Saddle Inn with a juryman on either hand, and Jacob was at the Plough with as many by his side, and Ross and Stean had one each at the tavern by the Cross. "You're right," said the jurymen to Thurstan. "Drink up," said Thurstan to the jurymen. "I'm your man," said the jurymen to Jacob. "Slip this in your fob," said Jacob to the jurymen. Then they reeled back to the courthouse arm-in-arm, and when the six good men of Maughold hadclamberedup to their places again, the juror's box contained several quarts more ale than before.
The jury did not agree on a verdict, and the Deemster dismissed them with hot reproaches. But some justice to Greeba seemed likely to come of this wild farce of law, for an advocate, who had learned what her brothers were doing for her, got up a case against them, for lack of a better brief, and so far prevailed on her behalf that the Deemster ordered that each of the six should pay her eight poundsyearly, as an equivalent for the share of land they had unlawfully withheld.
Now Red Jason had spent that day among the crowd at the courthouse, and his hot blood had shown as red as his hair through his tanned cheeks, while he looked on at the doings of Thurstan of the swollen eyes, and Jacob of the foxy face. He stood up for a time at the back like a statue of wrath with a dirty mist of blood dancing before it. Then his loathing and scorn getting the better of him he cursed beneath his breath in Icelandic and English, and his restless hands scraped in and out of his pockets as if they itched to fasten onsomebody'sthroat, or pick up something as a dog picks up a rat. All he could do was to curl his lip in a terrible grin, like the grin of a mastiff, until he caught a side-long glimpse of Greeba's face with the traces of tears upon it, and then, being unable to control any longer the unsatisfied yearning of his soul to throttle Jacob, and smash the ribs of Thurstan, and give dandified John a backhanded facer, he turned tail and slunk out of the place, as if ashamed of himself that he was so useless. When all was over he stalked off to Port-y-Vullin, but, too nervous to settle to his work that day, he went away in the evening in the direction of Lague, not thinking to call there, yet powerless to keep away.
Greeba had returned from Ramsey alone, being little wishful for company, so heavy was her heart. She had seen how her brothers had tried to rob her, and how beggarly was the help the law could give her, for though the one might order the others might not obey. So she had sat herself down in her loneliness, thinking that she was indeed alone in all the world, with no one to look up to any more, and no strong hand to rest on. It was just then that Jason pushed open the door of the porch, and stood on the threshold, in all the quiet strength of his untainted young manhood, and the calm breadth of his simple manner.
"Greeba, may I come in?" he said, in a low tone.
"Yes," she answered, only just audibly, and then he entered.
She did not raise her eyes, and he did not offer his hand, but as he stood beside her she grew stronger, and as she sat before him he felt that a hard lump that had gathered at his heart was melting away.
"Listen to me, Greeba," he said. "I know all yourtroubles, and I'm very sorry for them. No, that's not what I meant to say, but I'm at a loss for words. Greeba!"
"Yes?"
"Doesn't it seem as if Fate meant us to come together—you and I? The world has dealt very ill with both of us thus far. But you are a woman and I am a man; and only give me the right to fight for you——"
As he spoke he saw the tears spring to her eyes, and he paused and his wandering fingers found the hand that hung by her side.
"Greeba!" he cried again, but she stopped the hot flow of the words that she saw were coming.
"Leave me now," she said. "Don't speak to me to-day; no, not to-day, Jason. Go—go!"
He obeyed her without a word, and picking up his cap from where it had fallen at his feet, he left her sitting there with her face covered by her hands.
She had suddenly bethought herself of Michael Sunlocks; that she had pledged her word to wait for him, that she had written to him and that his answer might come at any time. Next day she went down to the post-office at Ramsey to inquire for a letter. None had yet come for her, but a boat from the Shetlands that might fetch mails from Iceland would arrive within three days. Prompt to that time she went down to Ramsey again, but though the boat had put into harbor and discharged its mails there was still no letter for her. The ordinary Irish trader between Dublin and Reykjavik was expected on its homeward trip in a week or nine days more, and Greeba's heart lay low and waited. In due course the trader came, but no letter for her came with it. Then her hope broke down. Sunlocks had forgotten her; perhaps he cared for her no longer; it might even be that he loved some one else. And so with the fall of her hope her womanly pride arose, and she asked herself very haughtily, but with the great tears in her big dark eyes, what it mattered to her after all. Only she was very lonely, and so weary and heart-sick, and with no one to look to for the cheer of life.
She was still at Lague, where her eldest brother was now sole master, and he was very cold with her, for he had taken it with mighty high dudgeon that a sister of his should have used the law against him. So, feeling how bitter it was to eat the bread of another, she had even begun to pinch herself of food, and to sit at meals but rarely.
But Jason came again about a fortnight after the trial, and he found Greeba alone as before. She was sitting by the porch, in the cool of the summer evening, combing out the plaits of her long brown hair, and looking up at Barrule, that was heaving out large and black in the sundown, with a nightcap of silver vapor over its head in the clouds.
"I can stay away no longer," he said, with his eyes down. "I've tried to stay away and can't, and the days creep along. So think no ill of me if I come too soon."
Greeba made him no answer, but thought within herself that if he had stayed a day longer he must have stayed a day too long.
"It's a weary heart I've borne," he said, "since I saw you last, and you bade me leave you, and I obeyed, though it cost me dear. But let that go."
Still she did not speak, and looking up into her face he saw how pale she was, and weak and ill as he thought.
"Greeba," he cried, "what has happened?"
But she only smiled and gave him a look of kindness, and said that nothing was amiss with her.
"Yes, by the Lord, but something is amiss," he said, with his blood in his face in an instant. "What is it?" he cried. "What is it?"
"Only that I have not eaten much to-day," she said, "that's all."
"All!" he cried. "All!"
He seemed to understand everything at a glance, as if the great power of his love had taught him.
"Now, by God——" he said, and shook his fist at the house in front of him.
"Hush!" Greeba whispered, "it is my own doing. I am loth to be beholden to any one, least of all to such as forget me."
The sweet tenderness of her look softened him, and he cast down his eyes again, and said:
"Greeba, there is one who can never forget you; morning and night you are with him, for he loves you dearly; ay, Greeba, as never maiden was loved by any one since the world began. No, there isn't the man born, Greeba, who loves a woman as he loves you, for he has nothing else to love in all the wide world."
She looked up at him as he spoke and saw the courage in his eyes, and that he who loved her stood as a man beside her. At that her heart swelled and her eyes began to fill,and he saw her tears and knew that he had won her, and he plucked her to his breast with a wild cry of joy, and she lay there and wept, while he whispered to her through her hair.
"My love! my love! love of my life!" he whispered.
"I was so lonely," she murmured.
"You shall be lonely no more," he whispered; "no more, my love, no more," and his soft words stole over her drooping head.
He stayed an hour longer by her side, laughing much and talking greatly, and when he went off she heard him break into a song as he passed out at the gate.
Then, being once more alone, she sat and tried to compose herself, wondering if she should ever repent what she had done so hastily, and if she could love this man as he well deserved and would surely wish. Her meditations were broken by the sound of Jason's voice. He was coming back with his happy step, and singing as merrily as he went.
"What a blockhead I am," he said, cheerily, popping his head in at the door. "I forgot to deliver you a letter that the postmaster gave me when I was at Ramsey this morning. You see it's from Iceland. Good news from your father, I trust. God bless him!"
So saying he pushed the letter into Greeba's hand and went his way jauntily, singing as before a gay song of his native country.
The letter was from Michael Sunlocks.
"Dear Greeba," the letter ran, "I am sorely ashamed of my long silence, which is deeply ungrateful towards your father, and very ungracious towards you. Though something better than four years havepassedaway since I left the little green island, the time has seemed to fly more swiftly than a weaver's shuttle, and I have been immersed in many interests and beset by many anxieties. But I well know that nothing can quite excuse me, and I would wrong the truth if I were to say that among fresh scenes and freshfaces I have borne about me day and night the memory of all I left behind. So I shall not pretend to a loyalty whereof I have given you no assurance, but will just pray of you to take me for what I truly am—a rather thankless fellow—who has sometimes found himself in danger of forgetting old friends in the making of new ones, and been very heartily ashamed of himself. Nevertheless, the sweetest thoughts of these four years have been thoughts of the old home, and the dearest hope of my heart has been to return to it some day. That day has not yet come; but it is coming, and now I seem to see it very near. So, dear Greeba, forgive me if you can, or at least bear me no grudge, and let me tell you of some of the strange things that have befallen me since we parted.
"When I came to Iceland it was not to join the Latin school of the venerable Bishop Petersen (a worthy man and good Christian, whom it has become by happiness to call my friend), but on an errand of mercy, whereof I may yet say much but can tell you little now. The first of my duties was to find a good woman and true wife who had suffered deeply by the great fault of another, and, having found her, to succor her in her distress. It says much for the depth of her misfortunes that, though she had been the daughter of the Governor-General, and the inhabitants of the capital of Iceland are fewer than two thousand in all, I was more than a week in Reykjavik before I came upon any real news of her. When I found her at last she was in her grave. The poor soul had died within two months of my landing on these shores, and the joiner of the cathedral was putting a little wooden peg, inscribed with the initials of her name, over her grave in the forgotten quarter of the cemetery where the dead poor of this place are buried. Such was the close of the first chapter of my quest.
"But I had still another duty, and, touched by the pathos of that timeless death, I set about it with new vigor. This was to learn if the unhappy soul had left a child behind her, and if she had done so to look for it as I had looked for its mother, and succor it as I would have succored her. I found that she had left a son, a lad of my own age or thereabouts, and therefore less than twenty at that time. Little seemed to be known about him, save that he had been his mother's sole stay and companion, that they had both lived apart from their neighbors, and much under the shadow oftheir distresses. At her death he had been with her, and he had stood by her grave, but never afterwards had he been seen by anyone who could make a guess as to what had become of him. But, whilst I was still in the midst of my search, the body of a young man came ashore on the island of Engy, and though the features were no longer to be recognized, yet there were many in the fishing quarter of this city who could swear, from evidences of stature and of clothing, to its identity with him I looked for; and thus the second chapter of my quest seemed to close at a tomb.
"I cannot say that I was fully satisfied, for nothing that I had heard of the boy's character seemed to agree with any thought of suicide, and I noticed that the good old Lutheran priest who had sat with the poor mother in her last hours shook his head at the mention of it, though he would give no reasons for his determined unbelief. But perhaps my zeal was flagging, for my search ceased from that hour, and as often since as my conscience has reproached me with a mission unfulfilled I have appeased it with the assurance that mother and son are both gone, and death itself has been my sure abridgment.
"Some day, dear Greeba, I will tell you who sent me (which you may partly guess) and who they were to whom I was sent. But it is like the way of the world itself, that, having set ourselves a task, we must follow it as regularly as the sun rises and sets, and the day comes and the night follows, or once letting it slip it will drop into a chaos. For a thing happened just at that moment of my wavering which altered the current of my life, so that my time here, which was to be devoted to an unselfish work, seems to have been given up to personal ambitions.
"I have mentioned that the good woman had been the daughter of theGovernor-General. His name was Jorgen Jorgensen. He had turned her adrift because of her marriage, which was in defiance of his wish, and through all the years of her poverty he had either abandoned her to her necessities, or her pride had hidden them from his knowledge. But he had heard of her death when it came to pass, and by that time his stubborn spirit had begun to feel the lonesomeness of his years, and that life was slipping past him without the love and tenderness of a child to sweeten it. So partly out of remorse, but mainly out of selfishness, he had set out to find the son whom his daughter had left behind her, thinking to give the boy the rightful place of a grandsonby his side. It was then that on the same search our paths converged, and Jorgen Jorgensen met with me, and I with Jorgen Jorgensen. And when the news reached Reykjavik of the body that had come out of the sea at Engy, the Governor was among the first to give credence to the rumor that the son of his daughter was dead. But meantime he had found something in me to interest him, and now he asked who I was, and what, and why I was come. His questions I answered plainly, without concealment or any disguise, and when he heard that I was the son of Stephen Orry, though he knew too well what my father had been to him and to his daughter (all of which, dear Greeba, you shall yet learn at length), he asked me to take that place in his house that he had intended for his daughter's son.
"How I came to agree to this while I distrusted him and almost feared him would take too long to tell. Only remember that I was in a country foreign to me, though it was my father's home, that I was trifling with my errand there, and had no solid business of life beside. Enough for the present that I did so agree, and that I became the housemate and daily companion of Jorgen Jorgensen. His treatment of me varied with his moods, which were many. Sometimes it was harsh, sometimes almost genial, and always selfish. I think I worked for him as a loyal servant should, taking no account of his promises, and never shutting my eyes to my true position or his real aims in having me. And often and again when I remembered all that we both knew of what had gone before, I thought the Fates themselves must shriek at the turn of fortune's wheel that had thrown this man and me together so.
"I say he was selfish; and truly he did all he could in the years I was with him to drain me of my best strength of heart and brain, but some of his selfish ends seemed to lie in the way of my own advancement. Thus he had set his mind on my succeeding him in the governorship, or at least becoming Speaker, and to that end he had me elected to Althing, a legislative body very like to the House of Keys. Violating thereby more than one regulation touching my age, nationality and period of residence in Iceland. There he made his first great error in our relations, for while I was a servant in his house and office my mind and will were his, but when I became a delegate they became my own, in charge for the people who elected me.
"It would be a long story to tell you of all that occurredin the three years thereafter; how I saw many a doubtful scheme hatched under my eyes without having the power or right to protest while I kept the shelter of the Governor's roof; how I left his house and separated from him; how I pursued my way apart from him, supported by good men who gathered about me; how he slandered and maligned and injured me through my father, whom all had known, and my mother, of whom I myself had told him; how in the end he prompted the Danish Government to propose to Althing a new constitution for Iceland, curtailing her ancient liberties and violating her time-honored customs, and how I led the opposition to this unworthy project and defeated it. The end of all is that within these two months Iceland has risen against the rule of Denmark as administered by Jorgen Jorgensen, driving him away, and that I, who little thought to sit in his place even in the days when he himself was plotting to put me there, and would have fled from the danger of pushing from his stool the man whose bread I had eaten, am at this moment president of a new Icelandic republic.
"It will seem to you a strange climax that I am where I am after so short a life here, coming as a youth and a stranger only four years ago, without a livelihood and with little money (though more I might perhaps have had), on a vague errand, scarcely able to speak the language of the people, and understanding it merely from the uncertain memories of childhood. And if above the pleasures of a true patriotism—for I am an Icelander, too, proud of the old country and its all but thousand years—there is a secret joy in my cup of fortune, the sweetest part of it is that there are those—there is one—in dear little Ellan Vannin who will, I truly think, rejoice with me and be glad. But I am too closely beset by the anxieties that have come with my success to give much thought to its vanities. Thus in this first lull after the storm of our revolution, I have to be busy with many active preparations. Jorgen Jorgensen has gone to Copenhagen, where he will surely incite the Danish Government to reprisals, though a powerful State might well afford to leave to its freedom the ancient little nation that lives on a great rock of the frozen seas. In view of this certainty, I have to organize some native forces of defence, both on land and sea. One small colony of Danish colonists who took the side of the Danish powers has had to be put down by force, and I have removed thepolitical prisoners from the jail of Reykjavik, where they did no good, to the sulphur mines at Krisuvik, where they are opening an industry that should enrich the State. So you see that my hands are full of anxious labor, and that my presence here seems necessary now. But if, as sanguine minds predict, all comes out well in the end, and Denmark leaves us to ourselves, or the powers of Europe rise against Denmark, and Iceland remains a free nation, I will not forget that my true home is in the dear island of the Irish Sea, and that good souls are there who remember me and would welcome me, and that one of them was my dear little playfellow long ago.
"And now, dear Greeba, you know what has happened to me since we parted on that sweet night at the gate of Lague, but I know nothing of all that has occurred to you. My neglect has been well punished by my ignorance and my many fears.
"How is your father? Is the dear man well, and happy and prosperous? He must be so, or surely there is no Providence dispensing justice in this world.
"Are you well? To me the years have sent a tawny beard and a woeful lantern jaw. Have they changed you greatly? Yet how can you answer such a question? Only say that you are well, and have been always well, and I will know the rest, dear Greeba—that the four years past have only done what the preceding eight years did, in ripening the bloom of the sweetest womanhood, in softening the dark light of the most glorious eyes, and in smoothing the dimples of the loveliest face that ever the sun of heaven shone upon.
"But, thinking of this, and trying to summon up a vision of you as you must be now, it serves me right that I am tortured by fears I dare not utter. What have you been doing all this time? Have you made any new friends? I have made many, yet none that seem to have got as close to me as the old ones are. One old friend, the oldest I can remember, though young enough yet for beauty and sweet grace, is still the closest to my heart. Do you know whom I mean? Greeba, do you remember your promise? You could hardly speak to make it. I had forgotten my manners so that I had left you little breath. Have you forgotten? To me it is a delicious memory, and if it is not a painful one to you, then all is well with both of us. But, oh, for the time to come, when many a similar promise, andmany a like breach of manners, will wipe away the thought of this one! I am almost in love with myself to think it was I who stood with you by the bridge at Lague, and could find it in my heart, if it were only in my power, to kiss the lips that kissed you. I'll do better than that some day. What say you? But say nothing, for that's best, dearest. Ah, Greeba—"
At this point there was a break in the letter, and what came after was in a larger, looser, and more rapid handwriting.
"Your letter has this moment reached me. I am overwhelmed by the bad news you send me. Your father has not yet come. Did his ship sail for Reykjavik? Or was it forHafnafiord? Certainly it may have put in at the Orkneys, or the Faroes. But if it sailed a fortnight before you wrote, it ought to be here now. I will make inquiries forthwith.
"I interrupted my letter to send a boat down the fiord to look. It is gone. I can see it now skirting the Smoky Harbor on its way to the Smoky Point. If your father comes back with it, he shall have a thousand, thousand welcomes. The dear good man—how well I remember that on the day I parted from him he rallied me on my fears, and said he would yet come here to see me! Little did he think to come like this. And the worst of his misfortunes have followed on his generosities! Such bighearted men should have a store like the widow'scurseto draw from, that would grow no less, however often they dipped into it. God keep him till we meet again and I hold once more that hand of charity and blessing, or have it resting on my head.
"I am anxious on your account also, dearest Greeba, for I know too well what your condition must be in your mother's house. My dear girl, forgive me for what I send you with this letter. The day I left the island your father lent me fifty pounds, and now I repay it to his daughter. So it is not a gift, and, if it were, you should still take it from me, seeing there are no obligations among those who love.
"The duties that hold me here are now for the first time irksome, for I am longing for the chance of hastening to your side. But only say that I may do so with your consent and all that goes with it, and I will not lose a daymore in sending a trustworthy person to you who shall bring you here to rejoin your father and me. Write by the first ship that will bring your letter. I shall not rest until I have heard from you; and having heard in such words as my heart could wish, I shall not sleep until you are with me, never, never to be parted from me again as long as life itself shall last. Write, dearest girl—write—write."