In the Land of the Great Snow Bear: A Tale of Love and Heroism

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 almost tragically. “Oh! would I could forget it, or that your ship had sunk in the blackest depths of ocean, rather than you had lived to bring this disgrace on the noble house of Alwyn.”

“Enough, mother; I will hear no more. You have thwarted me in the dearest wish of my heart, you whose love for a son ought to have conquered family pride. You have thrust me from the halls of my ancestors. I go forth into the world of adventure. I will seek in ambition, in ceaseless change, the only possible balm for the sorrow I have in parting from you.”

He turned on his heel as he spoke. He strode down the hall and through the avenue; he looked neither to right nor left, and never once behind him. His mother watched him with clasped hands, with anxious eyes, and with prayers on her pale and quivering lips.

“Would he turn? Surely, surely he would turn.” But nay; the trees soon hid him from view – hid him, and lastly Fingal, who with tail and head bent low, as if he knew that sorrow had come, followed at young Claude’s heels.

“Widowed and childless!” These were her words as she sank apparently lifeless on the floor.

Janet, her maid, found her thus and lifted her gently on to the couch. But when memory came back, no words her maid could utter could give comfort.

“I forgive him, Janet,” she said, “as he will forgive me. It is fate. He may write, but he’ll never return: too well do I know the pride of the Highland Alwyns. But, but, dear Janet,” – here all the woman’s nature gushed out in tears – “Janet,” she sobbed, “poor Fingal – too – has – gone.”

Sorrow had fallen like a dark cloud on Dunallan Towers, a cloud that was deepened in its darkness when one morning Alba, the snow-bird, was missing. It was last seen flying listlessly around the great elm trees, then straight as lightning bearing northwards. It was Janet who saw it, and it seemed to say —

“I hear a voice you cannot hear,That bids me not to stay;I see a hand you cannot see,That beckons me away.”

Chapter Six

“Grief is the Parent of Fame.”

Claude was miles away from home ere he noticed faithful Fingal trotting near him.

His first thought was to order him back, but this poor dog, as if reading his mind, crouched low at his feet, looking beseechingly up.

“This is my home,” he appeared to plead.

Claude’s next thought was to take him back; his mother might even ere now have relented. But that Highland pride, which has been at once the glory and the curse of Auld Scotland, stepped in and forbade.

Young Claude went on.

“Grief,” says one of England’s greatest novelists – Lord Lytton – “is the parent of fame.”

This is so true! Many and many a grief-stricken, sorrow-laden man and woman in this world would faint and fail and die, did they not fall back upon work to support them. This is the tonic that sustains tens of thousands of sorely stricken ones, until Time, the great healer, has assuaged the floods of their sorrow.

Young though Claude was – but little more than twenty-one – he had already obtained some fame in the fields of literature. He had been a rover, and to some extent an explorer – more especially among those wild and lonely islands in the Norland Ocean. Nor had he been content to merely cruise around these, watching only the ever-changing hues of the ocean, or the play of sunshine and shade on bold bluff crags and terraced cliffs. No, for he was as much on shore as afloat, mingling among their peoples when peoples there were, mingling among the birds if they were the only inhabitants, studying flora, studying fauna, reading even the great book of the rocks, that told him so much, but never yet had caused him to waver in his belief in a Supreme Being, who made the sea and all that is in it, the land and all it contains.

He was a sportsman and naturalist; in fact, “a man of the world,” in the only true and dignified sense of the term.

His was an original mind, and a deep-thinking one, so that the sketches of his life and travels which he had been in the habit of sending from time to time to the organs of higher-class literature were sure to be welcome both to editors and readers.

He was, moreover, a student of Norse lore, and a speculator in the theories – many of them vague enough – concerning the mysterious regions that lie around the Arctic Pole. And it was his writings on these countries that first brought him into real notoriety among a class of very worthy savants who, though seldom too willing to venture into extreme danger themselves, are, to their credit be it said, never averse to spend money in fitting out ships of research.

On the very day of his rejoining his vessel at Glasgow, a letter was handed to him by his chief mate, inviting him to London on important business in connection with discovery in the Arctic regions.

Two hours afterwards Claude was seated in a flying train, whirling rapidly on towards the borders. In nine hours more he was in town. Another half-hour brought him to a shipping office in Leadenhall Street.

“You are Captain Lord Alwyn?” said the grey-haired clerk, looking at him over the rims of a pair of golden spectacles.

“The same, at your service,” returned Claude.

“We did not expect you quite so soon. But if you did come, I was told to hand you this note.”

It was simply an invitation to dine with Professor Hodson and a few friends next evening at Richmond.

When Claude got there, the first person to greet him when announced was the learned professor himself, and a very bustling, dignified little man he was.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed, as he shook Claude warmly by the hand. “I couldn’t have believed it. Really, it is strange!”

“Believe what?” said Claude, bluntly.

“Why, that you were so young a man. Should have thought from your writings you must be forty if a day.”

It was Claude’s turn to laugh.

“But there, never mind. Authors are always taken to be older men than they are. No, I don’t think that youth will be an insuperable objection. Besides, youth has courage, youth has fire and health, to say nothing of a recuperative power of rising again even after being floored by a thousand misfortunes.”

“Difficulties, I dare say,” said Claude, “were made to be overcome.”

“To be sure. Well, then, having heard and read a good deal about your doings up North, we thought we would send for you, and instead of having a learned day discussion round a green baize-covered table, to invite you to join us at dinner – quite a quiet affair – and just to chat matters over.”

It must be confessed that poor Claude did not feel altogether at home among those extremely learned men.

The conversation was all about previous voyages of scientific discovery. Had those gentlemen been more practical and less theoretical, Claude would have been all with them; but it was evident from the way they spoke that not one of them had ever been on blue water, much less on the stormy seas of the Far North.

When, by way of encouraging him to talk more, in the course of the evening they asked Claude’s advice concerning the practicability of the plans they had in view, then young Claude spoke out like a man of business and a sailor.

Cool and collected to a degree, boldly banishing all theories, he hung on to facts. He did not ignore dangers and difficulties; he did not despise them, but professed himself willing to meet them, without for a moment holding out any promise of ultimate success in the adventurous undertaking. How dared he, he said, expect to do more than abler and better and braver men who had gone on the same track before him? If he did presume to hope to even a little more, it was because he should have all their bygone experiences to help him. If they entrusted the command of an exploring ship to him, there was but one thing he could boldly promise, and that was to do his best. He said much more to the same effect, and even enlarged upon the necessary equipment, victualling, and armament of a ship of the kind they proposed sending out, and when he at length concluded —

“Spoken like a man and a sailor,” said the professor, and a murmur of assent passed round the table:

The savants retired to another room to consult. When they came back, Professor Hodson advanced and shook hands with Claude.

“We are unanimous in thinking, Lord Alwyn,” he said, “that you are just the man we want. The vessel you are to command already lies in Southampton waters. There are doubtless a thousand alterations to be made: these you, with your experience, will be able to see to. Do not spare expense. Draw upon us. We want you to feel that it will be no fault of ours if the expedition be not crowned with success; and I have the support of my colleagues in adding that we sincerely believe it will be no fault of yours. Other details,” added the bold professor, “can be gone into whenever you please.”

It was a quiet little hotel that Claude occupied that night, but one which he meant to make his home while in London. And why? Smile if you like, reader, but the reason is this: the landlord did not object to the presence of noble Fingal in his house.

Claude sat long in his sitting-room before retiring. The state of his feelings may be more easily imagined than described. His mind was by turns here, there, everywhere – back in his boyhood’s home, afloat on the sea, with his mother at Dunallan Towers, then away in the Far North with Meta. His mind reverted to the past, and went forward again to the future. He was sad and hopeful by turns. But he had crossed the Rubicon; he could not now draw back from anything he had done or promised to do.

Before he retired, he knelt and asked guidance from Him in whose hands are all our ways, and he slept more soundly that night than he had done for weeks.

Chapter Seven

A Pleasure Sail

“Oh, mamma, I do hope the weather will be fine!” said pretty Miss Hodson.

“Well, my dear Clara, isn’t it fine? Why, a more delightful day could not well be imagined.”

“Yes, now, mamma; but I mean all along on this adventuresome voyage that we are about to take.”

“Don’t you bother your little head, my mouse,” said her father, fondling one of her little hands in his. “I know enough about the weather to give a forecast a week beforehand, and a good deal about the sea, too, though I confess I’ve never been on it much. Ahem!”

The speakers were seated in a cab that was rattling along the quay of Aberdeen on a lovely morning in April. There were monster boxes on top, another cab filled with luggage only came up behind, and still another containing three gentlemen.

Very distinguished men these were, indeed, though oddly ill-matched in appearance. Number 1, let me call him, was a true type of a middle-aged John Bull – tall, whiskered, stout, strong, yet calm and thoughtful withal. Number 2 might have been a Boston editor or an Edinburgh genius of the old school. He was medium in height, lanky rather, high in cheek-bone, deep in eye. He wore no beard, but had a bushy moustache and very long grey hair. Number 3 was evidently a fat Frenchman, rotund to a degree, black as to hair, which was cropped as short as a convict’s, and moustache, but so fat! You could best describe his outline by letters, thus – take a big O and a little o and two letters l. Now stick the little o on the top of the big O and you have his head and body. Then clap on the two l’s to represent his legs, and you have his lines complete. He was so stout that when he stuck out his little white hands, with their palms upwards, as Frenchmen have a habit of doing in argument, the finger-tips did not project an inch beyond him in front. But Number 1 was no less an individual than Sir Thomas Merino; Number 2 was the Baron de Bamber; and Number 3, Count Koskowiskey himself.

The little boys in Aberdeen had never before seen such a strange procession of cabs, nor such a strange crew inside, so that they felt constrained to run alongside and wave their ragged bonnets and shout themselves hoarse.

The savants, for such they were, thought to purchase peace with a shower of coppers. This only increased the crowd, and no beggars in Cairo ever yelled for backsheesh as did those boys for “bawbees.”

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1

Probably the arctic tern or snow-bird, which is hardly ever seen below the latitude of Iceland.