CHAPTER IV.
The Rise of 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 have passed away 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 fresh faces 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 of their 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 the Governor-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 grandson by 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 occurred in 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 the political 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, and many 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 for Hafnafiord? 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's curse to 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 day more 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."
Here there was another break in the letter, and then came this postscript.
"It is part of the penalty of life in these northern lands that for nearly one-half of the year we are entirely cut off from intercourse with the rest of the world, and are at the mercy of wind and sea for that benefit during the other half. My letter has waited these seven days for the passing of a storm before the ship that is to carry it can sail. This interval has seen the return of the sloop that I sent down the fiord as far as Smoky Point, but no tidings has she brought back of the vessel your father sailed in, and no certain intelligence has yet reached me from any other quarter. So let me not alarm you when I add that a report has come to Reykjavik by a whaler on the seas under Snaefell that an Irish schooner has lately been wrecked near the mouth of some basaltic caves by Stappen, all hands being saved, but the vessel gone to pieces, and crew and passengers trying to make their way to the capital overland. I am afraid to fear, and as much afraid to hope, that this may have been the ship that brought your father; but I am fitting out an expedition to go along the coast to meet the poor ship-broken company, for whoever they are they can know little of the perils and privations of a long tramp across this desolate country. If more and better news should come my way you shall have it in its turn, but meantime bethink you earnestly whether it is not now for you to come and to join me, and your father also, if he should then be here, and, if not, to help me to search for him. But it is barely just to you to ask so much without making myself clear, though truly you must have guessed my meaning. Then, dear Greeba, when I say 'Come,' I mean Come to be my wife. It sounds cold to say it so, and such a plea is not the one my heart has cherished; for through all these years I have heard myself whisper that dear word through trembling lips, with a luminous vision of my own face in your beautiful eyes before me. But that is not to be, save in an aftermath of love, if you will only let the future bring it. So, dearest love, my darling – more to me than place and power and all the world can give – come to me – come – come – come."
CHAPTER V.
Strong Knots of Love
Now never did a letter bring more contrary feelings to man or maid than this one of Michael Sunlocks brought to Greeba. It thrilled her with love, it terrified her with fear; it touched her with delight, it chilled her with despair; it made her laugh, it made her weep; she kissed it with quivering lips, she dropped it from trembling fingers. But in the end it swept her heart and soul away with it, as it must have swept away the heart and soul of any maiden who ever loved, and she leaped at the thought that she must go to Sunlocks and to her father at once, without delay – not waiting to write, or for the messenger that was to come.
Yet the cooler moment followed, when she remembered Jason. She was pledged to him; she had given him her promise; and if she broke her word she would break his heart. But Sunlocks – Sunlocks – Sunlocks! She could hear his low, passionate voice in the words of his letter. Jason she had loved for his love of her; but Sunlocks she had loved of her love alone.
What was she to do? Go to Sunlocks, and thereby break her word and the heart of Jason, or abide by Jason, and break her own heart and the hope of Sunlocks? "Oh," she thought, "if the letter had but come a day earlier – one little day – nay, one hour – one little, little hour!" Then, in her tortured mind, she reproached Jason for keeping it back from her by his forgetfulness, and at the next instant she reproached Sunlocks for his tardy despatch, and last of all she reproached herself for not waiting for it. "Oh," she thought, "was ever a girl born to bring such misery to those who love her!"
All the long night thereafter she tossed in restless doubt, never once closing her eyes in sleep; and at daydawn she rose and dressed, and threw open her window, and cool waves of morning air floated down upon her from the mountains, where the bald crown of Barrule was tipped with rosy light from the sun that was rising over the sea. Then, in the stillness of the morning, before the cattle in the meadows had begun to low, or the sheep on the hills to bleat, and there was yet no noise of work in the rickyard or the shippon, and all the moorland below lay asleep under its thin coverlet of mist, there came to her from across the fields the sound of a happy, cheery voice that was singing. She listened, and knew that it was Jason, chanting a song of Iceland after a night spent on the mountains; and she looked and saw that he was coming on towards the house, with his long, swinging stride and leap, over gorse and cushag and hedge and ditch.
It was more than she could bear after such night-long torment, to look upon the happiness she seemed about to wreck, so she turned her head away and covered her ears with her hands. But, recking nothing of this, Jason came on, singing in snatches and whistling by turns, until his firm tread echoed in the paved courtyard in the silence that was broken by nothing beside, except the wakening of the rooks in the elms.
"She must be awake, for she lies there, and her window is open," he thought to himself.
"Whisht!" he cried, tossing up a hand.
And then, without moving from where she stood, with her back resting against the window shutter, she turned her head about and her eyes aslant, and saw him beneath her casement. He looked buoyant and joyous, and full of laughter. A gun was over his shoulder, a fishing rod was in the other hand, at his belt hung a brace of birds, with the blood dripping on to his leggings, and across his back swung a little creel.
"Greeba, whisht!" he called again, in a loud whisper; and a third time he called her.
Then, though her heart smote her sore, she could not but step forward; and perhaps her very shame made her the more beautiful at that moment, for her cheeks were rosy red, and her round neck drooped, and her eyes were shy of the morning light, and very sweet she looked to the lad who loved her there.
"Ah!" he said almost inaudibly, and drew a long breath. Then he made pretence to kiss her, though so far out of reach, and laughed in his throat. After that he laid his gun against the porch, and untied the birds and threw them down at the foot of the closed door.
"I thought I would bring you these," he said. "I've just shot them."
"Then you've not been to bed," said Greeba nervously.
"Oh, that's nothing," he said, laughing. "Nothing for me. Besides, how could I sleep? Sleep? Why I should have been ready to kill myself this morning if I could have slept last night. Greeba!"
"Well!"
"You could never think what a glorious night it has been for me."
"So you've had good sport?" she said, feeling ashamed.
"Sport!" he cried, and laughed again. "Oh, yes, I've had sport enough," he said. "But what a night it was! The happiest night of all my life. Every star that shone seemed to shine for me; every wind that blew seemed to bring me a message; and every bird that sang, as the day was dawning, seemed to sing the song of all my happiness. Oh, it has been a triumphant night, Greeba."
She turned her head away from him, but he did not stop.
"And this morning, coming down from Barrule, everything seemed to speak to me of one thing, and that was the dearest thing in all the world. 'Dear little river,' I said, 'how happily you sing your way to the sea.' And then I remembered that before it got there it would turn the wheel for us at Port-y-Vullin some day, and so I said 'Dear little mill, how merrily you'll go when I listen to your plash and plunge, with her I love beside me."
She did not speak, and after a moment he laughed.
"That's very foolish, isn't it?" he said.
"Oh, no," she said. "Why foolish?"
"Well it sounds so; but, ah, last night the stars around me on the mountain top seemed like a sanctuary, and this morning the birds among the gorse were like a choir, and all sang together, and away to the roof their word rang out – Greeba! Greeba! Greeba!"
He could hear a faint sobbing.
"Greeba!"
"Yes?"
"You are crying."
"Am I? Oh, no! No, Jason, not that."
"I must go. What a fool I am," he muttered, and picked up his gun.
"Oh no; don't say that."
"Greeba!"
"Well, Jason?"
"I'm going now, but – "
"Why?"
"I'm not my own man this morning. I'm talking foolishly."
"Well, and do you think a girl doesn't like foolishness?"
He threw his head back and laughed at the blue sky. "But I'm coming back for you in the evening. I am to get the last of my rafters on to-day, and when a building is raised it's a time to make merry."
He laughed again with a joyous lightness, and turned to go, and she waved her hand to him as he passed out of the gate. Then, one, two, three, four, his strong rhythmic steps went off behind the elms, and then he was gone, and the early sun was gone with him, for its brightness seemed to have died out of the air.
And being alone Greeba knew why she had tried to keep Jason by her side, for while he was with her the temptation was not strong to break in upon his happiness, but when he was no longer there, do what she would, she could not but remember Michael Sunlocks.
"Oh, what have I done that two brave men should love me?" she thought; but none the less for that her heart clamored for Sunlocks. Sunlocks, Sunlocks, always Sunlocks – the Sunlocks of her childhood, her girlhood, her first womanhood – Sunlocks of the bright eyes and the smile like sunshine.
And thinking again of Jason, and his brave ways, and his simple, manly bearing, and his plain speech so strangely lifted out of itself that day into words with wings, she only told herself that she was about to break his heart, and that to see herself do it it would go far to break her own. So she decided that she would write to him, and then slip away as best she could, seeing him no more.
At that resolve she sat and wrote four pages of pleading and prayer and explanation. But having finished her letter, it smote her suddenly, as she folded and sealed it, that it would be a selfish thing to steal away without warning, and leave this poor paper behind her to crush Jason, for though written in pity for him, in truth it was fraught with pity only for herself. As mean of soul as that she could not be, and straightway she threw her letter aside, resolved to tell her story face to face. Then she remembered the night of Stephen Orry's death, and the white lips of Jason as he stood above the dying man – his father whom he had crossed the seas to slay – and, again, by a quick recoil, she recalled his laughter of that morning, and she said within herself, "If I tell him, he will kill me."
But that thought decided her, and she concluded that tell him she must, let happen what would. So partly in the strength of her resolve, and partly out of its womanly weakness, and the fear that she might return to her first plan at last, she took up her own letter to Jason, and locked it in a chest. Then taking from the folds at her breast the letter of Sunlocks to herself, she read it again, and yet again, for it was the only love letter she had ever received, and there was a dear delight in the very touch of it. But the thought of that sensuous joy smote her conscience when she remembered what she had still to do, and thinking that she could never speak to Jason eye to eye, with the letter of Sunlocks lying warm in her bosom, she took it out, and locked it also in the chest.
Jason came back at sundown to fetch her away that they might make some innocent sport together because his mill was roofed. Then with her eyes on her feet she spoke, and he listened in a dull, impassive silence, while all the laughter died off his face and a look of blank pallor came over it. And when she had finished, she waited for the blow of his anger, but it did not come.
"Then all is over between us," he said with an effort.
And looking up, she saw that he was a forlorn man in a moment, and fell to her knees before him with many pitiful prayers for forgiveness. But he only raised her and said gently,
"Mistress Greeba, maybe I haven't loved you enough."
"No, no," she cried.
"I'm only a rough and ignorant fellow, a sort of wild beast, I dare say, not fit to touch the hand of a lady, and maybe a lady could never stoop to me."
"No, no, there's not a lady in all the world would stoop if she were to marry you."
"Then maybe I vexed you by finding my own advantage in your hour of need."
"No, you have behaved bravely with me in my trouble."
"Then, Greeba, tell me what has happened since yesterday."
"Nothing – everything. Jason I have wronged you. It is no fault of yours, but now I know I do not love you."
He turned his face away from her, and when he spoke again his voice broke in his throat.
"You could never think how fast and close my love will grow. Let us wait," he said.
"It would be useless," she answered.
"Stay," he said stiffly, "do you love anyone else?"
But before she had time to speak, he said quickly,
"Wait! I've no right to ask that question, and I will not hear you answer it."
"You are very noble, Jason," she said.
"I was thinking of myself," he said.
"Jason," she cried, "I meant to ask you to release me, but you have put me to shame and now I ask you to choose for me. I have promised myself to you, and if you wish it I will keep my promise."
At that he stood, a sorrowful man, beside her for a moment's space before he answered her, and only the tones of his voice could tell how much his answer cost him.
"No – ah, no," he said; "no, Greeba, to keep your promise to me would be too cruel to you."
"Think of yourself now," she cried.
"There's no need to do that," he said, "for either way I am a broken man. But you shall not also be broken-hearted, and neither shall the man who parts us."
Saying this, a ghastly white hand seemed to sweep across his face, but at the next moment he smiled feebly and said, "God bless you both."
Then he turned to go, but Greeba caught him by both hands.
"Jason," she murmured, "It is true I cannot love you, but if there was another name for love that is not – "
He twisted back to her as she spoke, and his face was unutterably mournful to see. "Don't look at me like that," he said, and drew away.
She felt her face flush deep, for she was ashamed. Love was her pole-star. What was Jason's? Only the blankness of despair.
"Oh, my heart will break," she cried. "Jason," she cried again, and again she grasped his hands, and again their eyes met, and then the brave girl put her quivering lips to his.