Kitobni o'qish: «In the Land of the Great Snow Bear: A Tale of Love and Heroism»

Shrift:

Chapter One
Dunallan Towers

Even in the days of his boyhood – I had almost said infancy – there seems to have been much in the character and habits of Claude Alwyn that is unusual in children so young.

Some people tell us that the qualities of mind, developed by the individual, depend entirely on the nature of his associates and associations in early youth. I am not prepared to deny that there is a great deal of truth in this statement. But the facts therein do not account for everything, for individuality is stamped on a child from his very birth, and the power for good or for evil of the accidental association of after life may mould in a great measure, but cannot alter this.

“Many men many minds.”

A true though trite old saying is that, and there were, no doubt, a great many different opinions concerning young Claude among those who dwelt in, or were in the habit of visiting at, Dunallan Towers.

From an old journal or diary, which has been handed to me by its writer, with full permission to make whatever use I choose of it, I have gleaned much information bearing on the boy’s character and peculiarities.

Dunallan Towers, now so gloomy and desolate, was once the happiest and the homeliest, and at the same time the gayest and brightest of all the many beautiful mansions that grace the banks of the winding Nith. This was shortly after the marriage of Lord Alwyn to the only daughter of an English baronet.

There were those, however, about the country-side who did not hesitate to say that Alwyn might have been content to take for himself a bride from among the many fair and high-born dames of the shire in which he lived.

“The goshawk should never mate wi’ the ringdove,” said one stern old Scottish lady, “nor the owl perch low in the nightingale’s bower. Our cauld Highland hills will hardly suit the dainty limbs of Alwyn’s bonnie English bride. Our wild forests are no’ like scented southern groves, and the roaring Nith is no’ the placid Thames. A’thing will be strange to her, everything foreign, wild, and queer. She’ll no’ stay lang. You’ll see! you’ll see! you’ll see.”

But if this proud and ancient dame really meant to give herself out as a prophetess, she proved to be a false one; only, to her credit be it said, she was the very first to call on the Lady of the Towers, as people named the bride of Lord Alwyn – the first to call, and the first to become one of her best and firmest friends.

As a bachelor hall, the Towers had been somewhat of a failure; all that was altered after Alwyn brought home his young wife – she looked so young, and in years, indeed, was little more than a girl.

But her easy, pleasant manner captivated every one; and, whether it were winter, with the snow on lawns and park, and ice on the river’s edge, or summer, with the roses all in bloom, and the wind sighing softly through the birch-clad glens, bright and happy faces never failed to encircle the dinner-table of our winsome Lady of the Towers.

There was great rejoicing throughout all the parish on the birth of Lord Alwyn’s heir. Village bells were rung, and a huge bonfire was lighted on the very top of the highest hill: a bonfire that could be seen from house and hut for leagues and leagues around.

The bonfire was kept burning all night long. Meanwhile the village lads and lasses had assembled in a barn gaily bedecked with evergreens and flowers of every hue, and had made quite a ball-room of it. So the fire burned all the livelong night, and as long as the fire burned, the lads and lasses danced, till at last the grey dawn of a summer morning made fire and dancing both seem out of place.

But Alwyn’s heir did not cease to be a wonder and a subject for talk for the traditional nine days at least, during which time there was not a living soul in or about Dunallan Towers who had not been honoured with a peep at his little full moon of a face.

His nurse was so proud of her charge that she had even brought him as far as the top of the great hall-stair for Peter, the cow-boy, to have just one glimpse at.

Peter – the diary informs me – had left his boots on the mat; and when he reached the stair-top, and the snowy-white wraps were down-folded from the child’s face, the good-hearted cow-boy, thinking he was in duty bound to say something very complimentary in return for the high honour bestowed upon him, lifted both hands and eyes ceiling-wards, and ejaculated —

“My goodness! What a bonnie, bonnie bairn! I never saw the like o’ that before in a’ my born days!”

I pause for a moment here, reader, and raise my head from the table at which I have been writing with the diary mentioned lying open before me. I look up because some one has just glided silently into the room. It is Janet – Janet who wrote the diary; Janet who had been Claude’s nurse. She is very old now, her hair is as white as wreaths of drifted snow, but her face is still pleasant, and her eyes are bright, nor has the weight of years succeeded in bending her form.

She stands by my side, erect. She places one hand – how thin it is! – on the pages of the journal.

“You will not find everything there,” she says, “about my dear boy Claude.”

“Sit down, Janet,” I say to her kindly. “I like to have you near me. Take the book on your lap. Read to me, or talk to me, or do both; I shall listen and presently I shall write.”

The apartment in which I am seated is what is called the red parlour of Dunallan Towers. It is in one of the many gables of the old mansion that abuts upon a green lawn, or brae, sloping somewhat steeply down to the river’s bank.

It is a lovely evening in early autumn. Behind the purple hills in the west yonder, the sun has just set in a golden haze, and high up in the sky’s blue there are a few feather-like clouds of brightest crimson. By-and-by these will change to grey, then shadows of night will creep up from glen and dell, the rooks will cease to caw, and we shall hear only the murmur of the river over its pebbly bed, and the wind moaning through the topmost branches and the crisp leaves of those tall swaying trees.

Janet’s voice falls upon my ear in sad but pleasant monotone. It is like the voice of one chanting some old-world ballad. I do not think her eyes are turned on me as she speaks – mine are looking outwards into the twilight; and she is gazing back, as it were, to the far-distant past.

Why, it is dark! Janet must have been talking for hours and hours, and has glided away as silently as she came.

I awake from the reverie into which I had fallen and step out through the casement. How fresh the air is! How pleasant the wind’s soft whisper and the river’s song! The stars are out, and the round yellow moon is struggling up through a bank of clouds on the horizon. Now and then a bat flits past; now and then an owl hoots mournfully from some turret or chimney, round which the darkling ivy creeps. Not a light in any window. Silence broods over Dunallan Towers.

“The harp that once thro’ Tara’s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
As if that soul were fled.

“So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory’s thrill is o’er,
And hearts that once beat high for praise
Now feel that pulse no more.”

The night air is keen. I re-enter the red parlour, close the casement, and light my reading-lamp.

And now I write once more. No need for the journal’s assistance any longer, though. Every word that old Janet said has sunk deep into my mind and rooted itself in my memory, and will never be effaced while I and time have any connection.

Chapter Two
Claude Alwyn’s Boyhood

On the very day after the birth of Alwyn’s heir something strange occurred: a large flight of curious seagulls alighted in the park around Dunallan Towers. No one had ever remembered seeing such weird-looking birds there before, and Janet had averred that their arrival betokened no good. She was not wrong, for that same night it came on to blow from the north, oh, such a fearful gale! Many of the tallest and sturdiest trees were torn up by the roots, and even tossed about, and the Towers shook and trembled as if the very earth were quaking. It was eerisome to hear, at the dark midnight hour, the shriek of frightened wild birds around the house, high above the fitful roaring of the wind.

The Nith, too, came down “in spate;” they could see its white flashing waters, nearly close up to the window of the red parlour in which I now am sitting at work. It brought along with it from the mountains, fallen trees, bushes, heather-clad turf, and boulders of solid rock, tons and tons in weight.

All that night the storm raged, and though the wind went down about sunrise, the terrible rain still fell, and the river continued in raging spate. Great was the damage done to the lower-lying lands seawards; huts and even houses were laid low, sheep and cattle were drowned and borne away, so great is the fury and strength of a Highland river like the Nith when it “comes down,” as the people phrase it.

But the sun shone forth at length, and the clouds went driving southwards, leaving lovely rifts of blue between them, and the rain ceased, and the poor people of the glens came forth to view the work of devastation and to mourn their losses.

One of these, while walking in the park and not far from the mansion house, found, crouching under the gnarled root of an old tree, and gazing up at him with its bright crimson eye, or rather first with one eye then with the other, a snow-white gull of most graceful form.¹

He caught it – one wing was injured – and brought it round to the kitchen, where it was much admired and tenderly cared for. In little over a week it seemed as well and strong as it must have been before the storm. Yet it was in no hurry to leave.

It stayed on and on and on, and became as tame as a dove, and most affectionate to all it knew. But to Janet in particular it attached itself. One day it followed her into the room where Alwyn’s heir lay in his little crib. Janet showed him the bird. He smiled and stretched out his arms with a fond cry, and next moment the snow-bird was nestling quietly on his breast.

There was no keeping the gull out of Claude’s room after this, so it came to be called “baby’s bird.”

When Claude Alwyn was about three years of age, an event happened down the glen that cast that gloom on Dunallan Towers that never yet has left it: Lord Alwyn was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. Her ladyship left the glen after this, and went south, and Claude, childlike, would insist on taking his pet along with him.

Years flew by, summers passed and winters passed, but smoke was hardly ever seen to hover over the Towers. Then one day the old steward came down to the village all a-quiver with excitement. He wanted tradesmen of all kinds to come forthwith to the mansion house. Lady Alwyn and young Claude – now grown a great lad, the steward felt sure of this – were to return in less than a month.

Smoke enough now began to curl high over turret and tree; even the rooks seemed to feel the importance of the coming occasion, and positively crowed themselves hoarse.

At the appointed time the family carriage, a very stately and gigantic kind of a concern, rattled up the long avenue through the park, and soon after the widow of Lord Alwyn was once more Lady of the Towers. She was greatly altered. Though still young and youthful in appearance, sorrow had stamped itself on her brow and saddened her eye. It was said that she seldom smiled.

But she was even kinder to the poor of the district than she had been in the days of yore, and, wet day or dry day, she was never missed from the pew in church of a Sunday. And beside her always sat a sturdy bright-faced boy of about thirteen, with blue eyes, and short irrepressible locks of soft fair hair, that nothing on earth except scissors could have kept from tumbling over his brow. He was always dressed in the Highland garb as Highland lads ought to be, but his jacket was of black velvet and his kilt of the sombrest coloured tartan.

He was the favourite of every one on the estate, and so was his bird. Wherever young Claude – he was seldom called Lord Claude, because he did not like to be – wherever he went his snow-bird went as well.

And Claude was quite as fond of his pet as his pet was of him, and that was the secret of his success in taming this wild and strangely beautiful creature.

Only those who have seen the snow-bird in its own country, sailing around great icebergs or glittering glaciers, its plumage rivalling the snow in the purity of its whiteness, its shape more graceful than that of a swallow, can have any idea of the extreme loveliness of the creature. No wonder that the humble people of the glens, deeply imbued as they were with that superstition peculiar to the Highland peasantry, often looked upon young Claude and his matchless bird with something akin to awe.

“It is his good angel and nothing else,” one old crone used to remark, “his good angel, Heaven bless the bonnie boy.”

Yes, and a bonnie boy he looked at all times. Had you seen him standing, alpenstock in hand, dressed in Highland garb, on the brow of a hill, well defined against the sky, up to which his face was turned, and in which the snow-bird kept sailing and sailing, following every motion of Claude’s upstretched, waving arm, you could not have helped admiring him.

Claude spent much of his time fishing or shooting, but more particularly the former. Little he recked if the fish did not bite. He would then throw himself on his back among the ferns and flowers on the banks of the stream and pull out his “Burns” or his “Scott.” Meanwhile the snow-bird would perch upon a mossy boulder, or water-washed stone, and watch for the tiny troutlets, which sought for shelter and sunshine in the shallower water.

Young lord though he was, Claude was a “people’s boy.” It would be an exaggeration of speech to say that any of the villagers would have died for him; but it is true that Claude brightened every doorstep he crossed. And this too, all and only, by means of his own handsome face, sunny smile, and kindly words. Not that he did not bring the poor folks gifts, for he was often sent on errands of mercy by his mother, and he brought them also of his own accord many a goodly string of trout.

In a wild country like that in which our young hero dwelt and wandered, there are many dangers to life and limb, and Claude did not always escape quite scot-free. But when, on rushing down a lofty hillside once, he missed his foothold and fell over a crag full fifty feet high, he did not lose his presence of mind, but simply jumped up from the soft turf on which he had alighted, as if on a feather bed, and looked around for his bonnet, which he never saw again. The old shepherd who witnessed the involuntary exploit, told of it all over the parish, and the wise women alleged it was the bird that had saved him. When Claude’s gun burst in his hand and he escaped without a scratch, that too was in some way owing to the bird’s protecting care. When a branch on which he was leaning snapped beneath his weight and precipitated Claude into the roaring, foaming torrent beneath, where any one save a Webb would have been drowned, and when bleeding and cut he safely scrambled out, who but the bird, averred the wise old women, helped him out?

Claude rather encouraged than otherwise the belief in the supernatural powers of this wonderful snow-bird of his. Rather mischievous of him, it must be confessed, but then he was only a boy.

“My bird tells me I must do this or that,” he would often say; or, “I must consult my bird on that subject.”

Then he would pretend to hold communication with it, and the creature looked as though it understood every word he said. During the winter, Claude used to be at a distant school. Then his bird stayed at the Towers; but, although it suffered itself to be fed and petted by Lady Alwyn and by Janet, it did little else but mope until spring returned, and with it Claude.

The library at Dunallan Towers was a very large one, and Claude had the choosing of his own summer reading after forenoon lessons were over, and the books he took with him afield were always those of adventure, or some of the poets. It was often remarked that he never invited any of his tutors to accompany him in his rambles – only the bird.

“Mother,” said Claude one evening, “I’m going to be a sailor.”

“Dear boy,” replied his mother, “what has put such a notion in your head?”

“My bird, perhaps, mother,” said the boy, smiling.

“No, Claude, but those books you pore over. Dear boy, hardly half of what you read bears any resemblance to the truth.”

“Oh, mother,” cried the boy, “if only one half is true I must go and see that half I’m a good sailor already; you know how I enjoyed that voyage down the Mediterranean. I dream of all I saw even till this day. Mother, I must go to sea.

“Mother,” he said again, after a long pause, during which Lady Alwyn was musing, and very sad and gloomy were her thoughts – “mother, do you know where my bird came from?”

“It came from the wild mysterious region around the Pole.”

“Yes, I have been reading about that too, reading about it until I seem to have spent years and years of my life in the country. I have but to shut my eyes, any time I wish, and such pictures rise up before me as few but sailors ever see the reality of.”

Young Claude placed one hand across his eyes as he spoke.

“Here it is again, mother, a vast and lonely trackless waste of snow; great glaciers, against whose sides mountain waves for ever dash and foam; icebergs whose pinnacled heads taper upwards into a sky of cloudless blue. Fields of ice on which white bears roam; dark, inky seas where the walrus plays and tumbles, and through which the solitude-loving narwhal pursues his finny prey; and crystalline caves where sea-bears roar. But the scene is changed: it is night – the long, long, Polar night. Oh, how bright and beautiful the Aurora, with its ever-changing tints of crimson, green, and blue; and the stars, how near they seem; and the silence, how deep, how awful! But see, a storm is coming across the pack, and clouds are banking up and hiding the glorious Aurora; now it is on us, and higher than the stars rise the clouds of whirling, drifting snow. Hark! how the wind howls! There is danger on its wings; there is – ”

“Stop, boy, stop?” cried Lady Alwyn, laying her hand on his arm. “Speak not thus; you frighten me.”

There were tears in her eyes. Claude made haste to soothe her.

“Dear mother, forgive me!” he cried. “I am so thoughtless; but I will not transgress so again. Forgive and forget it.”

“You are all I have on earth to care for,” she said, drawing him gently towards her; “but, Claude, your happiness has always been, and ever will be, my first, my chief care. Yes, I will forgive your heedless words. You did not mean to hurt me; but, Claude,” – here she smiled, but it was a very sad smile – “I will not quite forget them. You love the sea.”

Lady Alwyn retired early to her room that evening, but it was long past midnight ere she slept. Her last thoughts ere slumber sealed her eyelids were these —

“And so my boy, even my boy, will be taken away from me. He will be a sailor; it is his bent, and why should I do aught that would mar his happiness? Heaven give me strength to bear my every trial here below, nor forget that on earth I have ‘no continuing city.’”

Lady Alwyn was rich, though not surpassingly so. She could afford her boy a yacht, in which he made many a cruise as owner – not as master – round the British islands and as far north as the Shetlands; indeed more than once they ventured over to Norway.

And so Claude grew up a sailor, so to speak. The smaller yacht gave place to a larger, and still a larger; and in a few years, when young Lord Alwyn had reached his twentieth year, he commanded, as well as owned, his ship himself.

About this time an event occurred that in a great measure altered the old tenor of Claude’s life, and that of his mother too, and on this event our story hinges.

In none of his cruises did his snow-bird accompany its master. Lady Alwyn was glad of this. “So long,” she thought, “as the bird stays with me, my boy will return safely from sea.”

It will be seen that even Lady Alwyn was slightly superstitious.

And Claude’s cruises were ever northwards. He had been several times to Iceland itself, and one day he meant to make a far longer and much more adventurous voyage. In the words of the old Norse song, it appeared as though —