and son had much to talk of that night. Lady Alwyn’s life since the Alba, her son’s ship, bore away for the far North, had been uneventful enough; but he had had adventures numerous indeed – although, mind you, he did not speak of them as such. Hardly ever is a rover off the stage heard making use of the word “adventures.” Modesty is one of the leading characteristics of your true hero.
There were times on this first evening when Claude would suddenly lapse into silence, almost into moodiness. He might be looking at his mother or not, but his mind was evidently abstracted, preoccupied, and his eyes had a far-away look in them. This did not escape his mother’s notice.
“Could he have any grief?” she thought. “Could he be ill and not know it?”
“You are sure,” she said once, “my dear Claude, that you have quite recovered from your terrible accident?”
“What, mother? Accident? Oh yes; indeed I had almost forgotten.”
“And your nurses, your kindly nurses, Claude: you must never forget them, dear.”
“I’m not likely to,” he said, with on emphasis which she thought almost strange. “Never while I live.”
He gazed into the fire.
“Would not this be the right time,” he was thinking, “to tell her all: to tell her I had three nurses instead of only two?”
But no; he dared not just yet. He would not run the risk of bringing a care to her now happy face. He thought himself thus justified in putting the evil day – if evil day it were to be – further off.
Claude was no coward, as I believe the sequel of my story will show, but still he dreaded – oh, how he dreaded! – the effect which the intelligence he was bound soon to give her would have upon her.
Claude slept but little that night, and slept but ill. More than once he started from some frightful dream, in which his mother was strangely mixed up, and not his mother only, but his Meta.
It was about five o’clock, though it would not be daylight for a long while yet. Claude was lying partially asleep: I say partially, because he seemed listening to the wind roaring through the leafless boughs of the trees, and every now and then causing the twiglets to tap and creak against the panes; but he thought he was at sea, and that the rushing sound was the rushing of waves, the creaking the yielding of the ship’s timbers to the force of the seas.
Suddenly he sprang half up in bed and listened intently, painfully.
He had distinctly heard some one in the room calling him. He could not be mistaken, and the voice seemed Meta’s.
“Claude! Claude!” cried the voice again, and his heart almost stood still for a moment as he saw a figure, which his imagination magnified a hundredfold, near the bed. “Claude?”
Next moment Alba, the snow-bird, alighted on his breast.
He slept soundly soon after this, but still when he appeared at breakfast he was so jaded looking and restless as to cause his mother considerable anxiety. He stoutly refused to see a medical man, however.
“It is nothing,” he laughed. “Nothing, dear mother, only slight fatigue. A sailor like myself thinks little of travelling a thousand miles by sea, yet dreads the rolling, jolting train.”
There was plenty to do and think about all day, well calculated to banish care. The villagers, the tenants, and neighbours all round were delighted to see the manly face and handsome figure of young Claude Alwyn once more among them, still accompanied by his pet – his spirit-bird, as the older cottagers had come to call it.
Then, although grouse were wild, there were hares in plenty, and fish in the river ready to be wooed by the gentle art of so true a fisherman as Claude Alwyn. And the walking exercise, through the heather hills, the fresh air, and the balmy breath of pine trees, never failed to refresh and invigorate him both in mind and body, so that he always returned to dinner buoyant and hopeful. But ever at the breakfast-table there was that weary look of carking care in his face.
He would go no further, however, in explaining it than confessing he did not sleep very well at night.
“It is the change,” he remarked, smiling, “from a hard mattress to one far too soft and luxuriant for a sailor. Besides, mother, I dare say I miss the motion of the ship.”
His mother only sighed softly.
There came to Claude one night a dream as vivid as any reality. He was back again in Iceland. He was gazing on the face and form of her whom he loved, though she did not seem to see him. She was seated on a hill-top, a favourite spot, where beside her he had often sat, when the fields beneath were green, the far-off sea an azure blue, when wild birds sang above and around them, and the perfume of wild flowers filled the summer air.
But snow was all over the landscape now, save where dark rocks jutted through the white, and the ocean, foam-flecked, dashed high over the beetling cliffs. Yes, there sat Meta, but oh! the sad, sad look in those beautiful eyes! She opened her lips and spoke at last.
“No, no, no!” she murmured; “he will never come again.”
He thought he sprang towards her, but she faded away like the mist from a geyser, and he was alone on the snow.
He slept no more that night. But he formed a resolve.
“No,” he said to himself, “I am not a man; not a drop of proud Alwyn’s blood runs through my veins if I hesitate longer. It is a duty I owe to my mother and to her to speak my mind. Yes, Meta, I will come back again.”
Were I an artist, I should delight in painting only beauty and peace: the fairest, holiest faces should be transferred to my canvas; the most smiling summer landscapes, the sunniest seas. But, alas! I am but an author, and no pen-and-ink depiction of life would be complete without the shade and shadow of sorrow.
I will not needlessly dwell on the interview that took place in the very room in which I am sitting writing now, between the proud Lady Alwyn and her son. Indeed, the interview was brief in itself: I have thus some excuse for being brevity personified in my description.
Pass we over, then, Claude’s introduction, his passionate declaration of love for Meta, his glowing panegyrics on her person and mind, and even the statement that only his regard for his mother and fear of hurting her feelings caused him to conceal the truth so long from her, and then we come to the dénouement.
“But, dearest mother, I now know and feel that your constant desire to do everything for my happiness will cause you to receive my Meta when I bring her home as my bride.”
If she had been silent till now, it was because she seemed as if thunder-struck.
“My boy,” she cried at last, “you are bewitched, or I am dreaming some hideous dream. Tell me it is all but an ill-timed joke. You are but a child – ”
“I am a man.”
“You have been deceived, put upon, tempted by a designing – ”
“Hold, mother, hold! Though the few words you have uttered sound like the death-knell to hopes I have fondly cherished, go no further: forget not yourself so far as to speak one word against my bride-elect, lest I forget I am your son.”
“My son? My son?” exclaimed the proud Lady of the Towers
