Complete works of hall c.., p.165
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 165
“So you did, so you did,” said John.
“And we sold it dirt cheap, too,” said Jacob, “but you’re not the loser; no, for here is a full seventh of all Lague straight to your hand.”
“Give me the money,” said Greeba.
“And there it is, dear,” said Jacob, fumbling the notes and the gold to count them, while his brethren, much gratified by this sign of Greeba’s complacency, began to stretch their legs from the easy chairs about them.
“Ay, and a pretty penny it has cost us to fetch it,” said John. “We’ve had to pinch ourselves to do it, I can tell you.”
“How much has it cost you?” said Greeba.
“No matter of that,” interrupted Jacob, with a lofty sweep of the hand.
“Let me pay you back what you have spent in coming,” said Greeba.
“Not a pound of it,” said Jacob. “What’s a matter of forty or fifty pounds to any of us, compared to doing what’s right by our own flesh and blood?”
“Let me pay you,” said Greeba, turning to Asher, and Asher was for holding out his hand, but Jacob, coming behind him, tugged at his coat, and so he drew back and said,
“Aw, no, child, no; I couldn’t touch it for my life.”
“Then you,” said Greeba to Thurstan, and Thurstan looked as hungry as a hungry gull at the bait that was offered him, but just then Jacob was coughing most lamentably. So with a wry face, that was all colors at once, Thurstan answered, “Aw, Greeba, woman, do you really think a poor man has got no feelings? Don’t press it, woman. You’ll hurt me.”
Recking nothing of these refusals Greeba tried each of the others in turn, and getting the same answer from all, she wheeled about, saying, “Very well, be it so,” and quickly locked the money in the drawer of a cabinet. This done, she said sharply, “Now, you can go.”
“Go?” they cried, looking up from their seats in bewilderment.
“Yes,” she said, “before my husband returns.”
“Before he returns?” said Jacob. “Why, Greeba, we wish to see him.”
“You had better not wait,” said Greeba. “He might remember what you appear to forget.”
“Why,” said Jacob, with every accent of incredulity, “and isn’t he our brother, so to say, brought up in the house of our own father?”
“And he knows what you did for our poor father, who wouldn’t lie shipwrecked now but for your heartless cruelties,” said Greeba.
“Greeba, lass, Greeba, lass,” Jacob protested, “don’t say he wouldn’t take kind to the own brothers of his own wife.”
“He also knows what you did for her,” said Greeba, “and the sorry plight you brought her to.”
“What!” cried Jacob, “you never mean to say you are going to show an ungrateful spirit, Greeba, after all we’ve brought you?”
“Small thanks to you for that, after defrauding me so long,” said Greeba.
“What! Keeping you from marrying that cheating knave?” cried Jacob.
“You kept me from nothing but my just rights,” said Greeba. “Now go — go.”
Her words fell on them like swords that smote them hip and thigh, and like sheep they huddled together with looks of amazement and fear.
“Why, Greeba, you don’t mean to turn us out of the house,” said Jacob.
“And if I do,” said Greeba, “it is no more than you did for our dear old father, but less; for that house was his, while this is mine, and you ought to be ashamed to show your wicked faces inside its doors.”
“Oh, the outrageous little atomy,” cried Asher.
“This is the thanks you get for crossing the seas to pay people what there was never no call to give them,” said Stean.
“Oh, bad cess to it all,” cried Ross, “I’ll take what it cost me to come, and get away straight. Give it me, and I’m off.”
“No,” said Greeba, “I’ll have no half measures. You refused what I offered you, and now you shall have nothing.”
“Och, the sly slut — the crafty young minx,” cried Ross, “to get a hold of the money first.”
“Hush, boys, leave it to me,” said Jacob. “Greeba,” he said, in a voice of deep sorrow, “I never should have believed it of you — you that was always so kind and loving to strangers, not to speak of your own kith and kin — —”
“Stop that,” cried Greeba, lifting her head proudly, her eyes flashing, and the woman all over aflame. “Do you think I don’t see through your paltry schemes? You defrauded me when I was poor and at your mercy, and now when you think I am rich, and could do you a service, you come to me on your knees. But I spurn you, you mean, grovelling men, you that impoverished my father and then turned your backs upon him, you that plotted against my husband and would now lick the dust under his feet. Get out of my house, and never darken my doors again. Come here no more, I tell you, or I will disown you. Go — go!”
And just as sheep they had huddled together, so as sheep she swept them out before her. They trooped away through the kitchen and past the little English maid, but their eyes were down and they did not see her.
“Did ye give her that crown piece?” asked Thurstan, looking into Jacob’s eyes. But Jacob said nothing — he only swore a little.
“The numskull!” muttered Thurstan. “The tomfool! The booby! The mooncalf! The jobbernowl! I was a fool to join his crackbrained scheme.”
“I always said it would come to nothing,” said Asher, “and we’ve thrown away five and thirty pound apiece, and fourteen per cent. for the honor of doing it.”
“It’s his money, though — the grinding young miser — and may he whistle till he gets it,” said Thurstan.
“Oh, yes, you’re a pretty pack of wise asses, you are,” said Jacob, bitterly. “Money thrown away, is it? You’ve never been so near to your fortune in your life.”
“How is that?” asked the other five at once.
“How is it that Red Jason has gone to prison? For threatening Michael Sunlocks? Very likely,” said Jacob, with a curl of the lip.
“What then?” said John.
“For threatening herself,” said Jacob. “She has lied about it.”
“And what if she has? Where’s our account in that?” said Asher.
“Where? Why, with her husband,” said Jacob, and four distinct whistles answered him.
“You go bail Michael Sunlocks knows less than we know,” Jacob added, “and maybe we might tell him something that would be worth a trifle.”
“What’s that?” asked John.
“That she loved Red Jason, and ought to have married him,” said Jacob; “but threw him up after they had been sweethearting together, because he was poor, and then came to Iceland and married Michael Sunlocks because he was rich.”
“Chut! Numskull again! He’d never believe you,” said Thurstan.
“Would he not?” said Jacob, “then maybe he would believe his own eyes. Look there,” and he drew a letter out of his pocket.
It was the abandoned letter that Greeba wrote to Jason.
“Isn’t he a boy!” chuckled Gentleman John.
Two days longer they stayed at Reykjavik, and rambled idly about the town, much observed by the Icelanders and Danes for their monkey jackets of blue Manx cloth, and great sea boots up to their thighs. Early on the afternoon of the second day they sighted, from the new embankment where they stood and watched the masons, a ship coming up the fiord from the Smoky Point. It was a brig, with square sails set, and as she neared the port she ran up a flag to the masthead. The flag was the Icelandic flag, the banner of the Vikings, the white falcon on the blue ground, and the Fairbrothers noticed that at the next moment it was answered by a like flag on the flag-staff of Government House.
“He’s coming, he’s yonder,” said Jacob, flapping his hands under his armpits to warm them.
In a few minutes they saw that there was a flutter over the smooth surface of the life of the town, and that small groups of people were trooping down to the jetty. Half an hour later the brig ran into harbor, dropped anchor below the lava reef, and sent its small boat ashore. Three men sat in the boat; the two sailors who rowed, and a gentleman who sat on the seat between them. The gentleman was young, flaxen-haired, tall, slight, with a strong yet winsome face, and clad in a squirrel-skin coat and close-fitting squirrel-skin cap. When the boat grounded by the jetty he leapt ashore with a light spring, smiled and nodded to the many who touched their hats to him, hailed others with a hearty word, and then swung into the saddle of a horse that stood waiting for him, and rode away at an eager trot in the direction of Government House.
It was Michael Sunlocks.
CHAPTER XI.
The Pardon.
When the men whom Michael Sunlocks sent into the interior after Adam Fairbrother and his shipwrecked company returned to him empty-handed, he perceived that they had gone astray by crossing a great fiord lying far east of Hekla when they should have followed the course of it down to the sea. So, counting the time that had been wasted, he concluded to take ship to a point of the southern coast in the latitude of the Westmann Islands, thinking to meet old Adam somewhere by the fiord’s mouth. The storm delayed him, and he reached the fiord too late; but he came upon some good news of Adam there: that, all well, though sore beset by the hard weather, and enfeebled by the misfortunes that had befallen them, the little band of ship-broken men had, three days before his own coming, passed up the western bank of the fiord on foot, going slowly and heavily laden, but under the safe charge of a guide from Stappen.
Greatly cheered in heart at these good tidings Michael Sunlocks had ordered a quick return, for it was unsafe, and perhaps impossible, to follow up through the narrow chasms of the fiord in a ship under sail. On getting back to Reykjavik he intended to take ponies across country in the direction of Thingvellir, hoping to come upon old Adam and his people before they reached the lake or the great chasm on the western side of the valley, known as the Chasm of All Men.
And thinking, amid the flutter of joyful emotions, that on the overland journey he would surely take Greeba with him, for he could never bear to be so long parted from her again, all his heart went back to her in sweet visions as his ship sped over the sea. Her beauty, her gentleness, her boldness, her playful spirits, and all her simple loving ways came flowing over him wave after wave, and then in one great swelling flood. And in the night watches, looking over the dark waters, and hearing nothing but their deep moan, he could scarce believe his fortune, being so far away from the sight of her light figure, and from the hearing of her sweet voice, that she was his — his love, his wife, his darling. A hundred tender names he would call her then, having no ear to hear him but the melancholy waves, no tongue to echo him but the wailing wind, and no eye to look upon him but the eye of night.
And many a time on that homeward voyage, while the sails bellowed out to the fair breeze that was carrying him to her, he asked himself however he had been able to live so long without her, and whether he could live without her now if evil chance plunged his great happiness into greater grief. Thinking so, he recalled the day of her coming, and the message he got from the ship in the harbor saying she had come before her time, and how he had hastened down, and into the boat, and across the bay, and aboard, with a secret trembling lest the years might have so changed her as to take something from her beauty, or her sweetness, or her goodness, or yet the bounding playfulness that was half the true girl’s charm. But, oh, the delicious undeceiving of that day, when, coming face to face with her again, he saw the rosy tint in her cheek and the little delicate dimple sucked into it when she smiled, and the light footstep, and the grace of motion, and the swelling throat, and the heaving bosom and the quivering lids over the most glorious eyes that ever shone upon this earth! So, at least, it had seemed to him then, and still it seemed so as his ship sailed home.
At Smoky Point they lay off an hour or two to take in letters for the capital, and there intelligence had come aboard of the arrest, trial, and condemnation of Jason for his design and attempt upon the life of the President. Michael Sunlocks had been greatly startled and deeply moved by the news, and called on the master to weigh the anchor without more delay than was necessary, because he had now a double reason for wishing to be back in Reykjavik.
And being at length landed there he galloped up to Government House, bounded indoors with the thought of his soul speaking out of his eyes, and found Greeba there and every one of his sweetest visions realized. All his hundred tender, foolish, delicious names he called her over again, but with better ears to hear them, while he enfolded her in his arms, with both her own about his neck, and her beautiful head nestling close over his heart, and her fluttering breast against his breast.
“Dearest,” he whispered, “my darling, love of my life, however could I leave you so long?”
“Michael,” she whispered back, “if you say any more I shall be crying.”
But the words were half smothered by sobs, for she was crying already. Seeing this, he sheered off on another tack, telling her of his mission in search of her father, and that if he had not brought the good man back, at least he had brought good news of him, and saying that they were both to start to-morrow for Thingvellir with the certainty of meeting him and bringing him home with great rejoicings.
“And now, my love, I have a world of things to attend to before I can go,” said Michael Sunlocks, “and you have to prepare for two days in the saddle over the snow.”
Greeba had been smiling through the big drops that floated in her eyes, but she grew solemn again, and said —
“Ah, Michael, you cannot think what trouble we have all had while you have been away.”
“I know it — I know all,” said Michael Sunlocks, “so say no more about it, but away to your room, my darling.”
With that he rang a hand-bell that stood on the table, and Oscar, his servant, answered the call.
“Go across to the jail,” he said, “and tell Jon that his prisoner is not to be removed until he has had orders from me.”
“What prisoner, your Excellency?” said Oscar.
“The prisoner known as Jason,” said Michael Sunlocks.
“He’s gone, your Excellency,” cried Oscar.
“Gone?”
“I mean to the Sulphur Mines, your Excellency.”
“When was he sent?”
“Yesterday morning, at daybreak, your Excellency.”
Michael Sunlocks sat at a table and wrote a few lines, and handed them to his man, saying, “Then take this to the Lagmann, and say I shall wait here until he comes.”
While this was going forward Greeba had been standing by the door with a troubled look, and when Oscar was gone from the room she returned to her husband’s side, and said, with great gravity, “Michael, what are you going to do with that man?”
But Michael Sunlocks only waved his hand, and said, “Nay, now, darling, you shall not trouble about this matter any more. It is my affair, and it is for me to see to it.”
“But he has threatened your life,” cried Greeba.
“Now, love, what did I say?” said Michael Sunlocks, with uplifted finger and a pretence at reproof. “You’ve fretted over this foolish thing too long; so think no more about it, and go to your room.”
She turned to obey.
“And, darling,” he cried in another voice, as she was slowly going, “that I may seem to have you with me all the same, just sing something, and I shall hear you while I work. Will you? There!” he cried, and laughed before she had time to answer. “See what a goose you have made of me!”
She came back, and for reply she kissed his forehead, and he put his lips to her lovely hand. Then, with a great lump in her throat, and the big drops rolling from her eyes to her cheeks, she left him to the work she sorely feared.
And being alone, and the candles lighted and the blinds drawn down, for night had now fallen in, he sat at the table to read the mass of letters that had gathered in his absence. There was no communication of any kind from the Government at Copenhagen, and satisfying himself on this point, and thinking for the fiftieth time that surely Denmark intended, as she ought, to leave the people of world-old Iceland to govern themselves, he turned with a sigh of relief to the strange, bewildering, humorous, pathetic hodge-podge of petitions, complaints, requests, demands and threats that came from every quarter of the island itself. And while he laughed and looked grave, and muttered, and made louder exclamations over these, as one by one they passed under his eye, suddenly the notes of a harpsichord, followed shortly by the sweeter notes of a sweet voice, came to him from another room, and with the tip of his pen to his lips, he dropped back in his chair to listen.
“My own song,” he thought, and his eyelids quivered.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine. Oh, leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine; The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove’s nectar sup I would not change for thine.”
It was Greeba singing to him as he had bidden her.
“God bless her,” he thought again in the silence that followed.
Ah, little did he think as he listened to her song that the eyes of the singer were wet, and that her heart was eating itself out with fears.
“What have I done to deserve such happiness?” he asked himself. But just as it happens that at the moment when our passionate joy becomes conscious of itself we find some dark misgivings creep over us of evil about to befall, so the bounding gladsomeness of Michael Sunlocks was followed by a chill dread that he tried to put aside and could not.
It was at that moment that the Lagmann entered the room. He was very tall and slight, and had a large head that drooped like daffodil. His dress was poor, he was short-sighted, growing elderly, and silent of manner. Nothing in his appearance or bearing would have suggested that he had any pride of his place as Judge of the island. He was a bookworm, a student, a scholar, and learned in the old sagas and eddas.
“Lagmann,” said Michael Sunlocks, with simple deference. “I have sent for you on a subject of some moment to myself.”
