Chapter 1. A WINTER NIGHT'S PROLOGUE
Chapter 2. THE YEARS ROLE BACK: A DEATH BED
Chapter 3. SHADOWS AT THE FEN FARM
Chapter 4. SOWING THE BLACK SEED
Chapter 5. ENTER PRISCILLA
Chapter 6. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Chapter 7. A DISAFFECTED SPIRIT
Chapter 8. CLOUDS IN THE SKY
Chapter 9. THE ENEMY IN THE PATH
Chapter 10. UP AT THE WILLOWS
Chapter 11. ANOTHER LOVE SCENE
Chapter 12. KATE CHRISTIANSON'S TROUBLE
Chapter 13. KATE COMES HOME
Chapter 14. THE WIDOW'S CUP IS FULL
Chapter 15. THE DEAD WOMAN
Chapter 16. ON BOARD THE 'MILES STANDISH'
Chapter 17. OUTWARD BOUND
Chapter 18. JOHN DYSON
Chapter 19. FACE TO FACE AGAIN
Chapter 20. PRISCILLA MAKES HER CHOICE
Chapter 21. BETWEEN TWO ELEMENTS
Chapter 22. CAST AWAY
Chapter 23. ICE-DRIFT FROM THE POLAR SEA
Chapter 24. THE STORM
Chapter 25. BESET BY THE ICE
Chapter 26. 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE'
Chapter 27. HERE BEGINS CHRISTIAN CHRISTIANSON'S RECORD, WRIT DOWN BY HIS OWN HAND
Chapter 28. THE ISLAND OF DESOLATION
Chapter 29. CHRISTIAN ROOFS HIS HOUSE
Chapter 30. A NEW PERPLEXITY
Chapter 31. THE FACE ON THE CLIFF
Chapter 32. THE TWO MEN
Chapter 33. IN THE SHADOW OF THE CAVE
Chapter 34. 'COME BACK WITH ME!'
Chapter 35. THE AURORA
Chapter 36. THE BEAR
Chapter 37. VIGIL
Chapter 38. OUT IN THE SNOW
Chapter 39. THE SICK MAN'S DREAMS
Chapter 40. 'OUR FATHER'
Chapter 41. THE LAST LOOK
Chapter 42. 'SNOW TO SNOW!'
Chapter 43. FROM THE LOG OF THE WHALER 'NAUTILUS'
Chapter 44. AT THE SAILOR'S HOME
Chapter 45. EPILOGUE
Chapter 1. A WINTER NIGHT'S PROLOGUE
'Granddad, Granddad! look up!--it is Marjorie. Have you forgotten
your niece, Marjorie Wells? And this is little Edgar, Marjorie's son!
Speak to him, Edgar, speak to granddad. Alack, this is one of his
dark days, and he knoweth no one.'
In the arm-chair of carven oak stained black as ebony by the
smokes of many years, and placed in the great hall where the yule log
is burning, the old man sits as he has sat every day since last
winter; speechless, to all seeming sightless; faintly smiling and
nodding from time to time when well shaken into consciousness by some
kindly hand, and then relapsing into stupor. He is paralysed from the
waist downwards. His deeply wrinkled face is ashen gray and perfectly
bloodless, set in its frame of snow-white hair; hair that has once
been curly and light, and still falls in thin white ringlets on the
stooping shoulders; his hands are shrivelled to thinnest bone and
parchment; his eyes, sunken deep beneath the brows, give forth little
or no glimmer of the fire of life.
Ninety years old. The ruin, or wreck, of what has once been a
gigantic man.
The frame is still gigantic, and shows the mighty mould in which
the man was made; the great head, with its brood overhanging brows
and square powerful jaw, is like the head of an aged lion of Africa,
toothless and gray with time.
Kick the great log, and as the sparks fly up the chimney thick as
bees from out a hive, his eyes open a little, and he seems faintly
conscious of the flame. Flash the lamp into his sunken eyes, and as
he mutters curiously to himself, and fumbles with thin hands upon his
knees, a faint flash of consciousness comes from the smouldering
brand of brain within.
He is not always so inert as now. This, as the grave matron who is
bending over him says, is one of his dark days. Sometimes he will
look around and talk feebly to his children's children, and seem to
listen as some one reads out of the great family Bible which stands
ever near his elbow; and the gray old face will smile gently, and the
thin worn hand lie lightly as a leaf on some flaxen head. But
to-night, though it is Christmas Eve, and all the kinsfolk of the
house are gathered together, he knows no one, and sees and hears
nothing. He breathes, and that is all.
All round the upland hall the snow is lying, but over it, since
last night, have fallen, in black tree-like shadows, the trails of
the thaw. The woods are bare. The great horse-chestnut on the
hill-top has long since shed its sevenfold fans, intermingled with
jagged brown buds bursting open to show the glossy nuts within. Bare
even is the ash, which keeps a goodly portion of its leaves so long,
and stands scarcely half stript, darkening in the chill autumnal
wind. All the landscape round looks dark and ominous; the shadow of
winter is seen visibly upon the shivering world.
'Put a drop to his lips--perhaps he'd know us then.'
The speaker, a tall, handsome widow of fifty, with grim,
weather-beaten face, holds by the hand a dark-eyed boy of ten,
swarthy as a quadroon. Friends and kinsmen of the family--of both
sexes and all ages--gather round. It is a festival, and all are more
or less gorgeously clad, bright-ribbon'd caps and gorgeous silk gowns
being predominant among the women, and blue swallow-tail'd coats and
knee-breeches among the men. Next to the centenarian, the chief
centre of interest is the handsome widow and her little boy. She has
been long absent from England, having married a West Indian planter,
and long ago settled down in Barbadoes. A widow with one child, she
has at last returned to the village where she was born, and though
she has been some months at home, the novelty of her presence has by
no means worn away.
'Put a drop to his lips,' she repeats, 'and speak up to
grandfather.'
'Grandfather!' cries the boy, taking one of the cold bony hands.
No stir--no sign.
'It's no use, Marjorie,' observes the good matron with a dolorous
shake of the head. 'When he goes like this, he is stone deaf and
blind. Some of these days, doctor says, he'll never wake up at all,
but go out like a spark, as quiet as you see him now.'
'And no wonder,' returns the widow. 'The Book says three score and
ten, and he is over a score beyond.'
'Four score and ten, and seven weeks,' pipes a thin voice from the
background. 'Ah, it be a powerful age.'
He who speaks is himself an old man, very thin and very feeble,
with a senile smile and purblind eyes; yet, gazing upon the figure in
the arm-chair, he assumes an appearance of ghastly youth, and feels
quite fresh and boylike.
'Four score and ten, and seven weeks,' he repeats, 'and the master
was a man growed before I was born. He puts me in mind of the great
oak by Dingleby Waste, for it stood many a hundred year before it
fell, and now, though it be fallen with its roots out o' the ground,
its boughs do put out every summer a little patch of green, just to
show there be a spark of life i' the old stump yet.'
The members of the family group gaze open-mouthed at the speaker,
and then, with mouths still wider open, at the tenant of the
arm-chair; one and all with a curious air of belonging to another and
less mortal species, and having nothing in common with a thing so
fallen and so perishable. And still the old man does not stir. Lying
thus, he does indeed seem like some mighty tree of the forest,
gnarled and weather-beaten and bare, uprooted and cast down, with
scarcely a sign to show that it has once gloried in the splendour of
innumerable leaves, and stood erect in its strength against the
crimson shafts of sunset and of dawn.
All the long winter evening there has been mirth making around
him. The hall is hung with holly, green leaf and red berry; and from
the quaint old lamp that swings from the centre beam is pendent a
bunch of whitest-berried mistletoe. Fiddles and flutes and pipes have
been playing, and nimble feet have beaten merry time on the polished
oaken floor. And throughout it all grandfather has kept his silent
seat on the ingle, and hardly seemed to hear or see.
It is a grand old hall, fit to be a portion of some grand manorial
abode; and such indeed it was once upon a time, before the old manor
house fell into decay, and became the home of the Christiansons.
Facing the great ingle is a large double entrance door, studded with
great nails and brazen bars like a prison gate; and whenever this
door--or rather one half of it--is swung open, you see the snow
whirling outside, and can hear a roar like the far-off murmur of the
sea. The hall is long and broad, and at one end there is a wide
staircase of carven oak, leading to a gallery, which in turn
communicates with the upper rooms of the house. In the gallery sit
the musicians, led by the little old cripple, Myles Middlemass, the
parish clerk. Great black beams, like polished ebony, support the
ceiling. The fireplace is broad and high, with fixed oaken forms on
either side, and projecting thence, two sphynx-like forms of
well-burnished brass; while facing the fire and the great yule log,
sits, in his arm-chair of polished oak, the old man, Christian
Christianson, of the Fen.
The music begins anew, and the folk begin a country dance. Farm
maidens and farm labourers lounge in from the kitchen, gathering like
sheep at one end of the hall, close to the kitchen door. Then Farmer
Thorpe, who is master of the house, which came to him with Mary
Christianson, the old man's daughter, leads off the dance with
Mistress Marjorie, his grim kinswoman from Barbadoes. The others
follow, young and old, and the oldest as merrily as the youngest.
Loud cries and laughter rise ringing to the rafters; there is
struggling in corners, girlish laughter, patter of light and peal of
heavy feet; and the louder the mirth sounds within, the louder roars
the winter wind without. But old Christian sits moveless, with his
blank eyes, half-closed, fixed on the fire. Like a fallen tree, did
we say? Rather like some gray pillar of granite rising grimly out of
the sea; with the innumerable laughter of ocean around it, and flight
of white wings around it, and brightness above it; dead, dead to all
the washing of the waves of life, and blind to all the shining of the
sun.
As he sits there, some look at him in awe, and whisper to each
other of his past, and shake the head ominously as they think of his
strange adventures sailing up and down the world. For he has lived
much of his life in foreign lands, a wanderer for many years without
a place whereon to rest his feet; he has been a master mariner, and a
trader, and an owner of sailing ships; and far away, long ago, he
gathered wealth in some mysterious fashion, and brought it back with
him to buy the ancestral acres that his father's father lost. A
stormy life and a terrible, say the gossips; not without blood's sin
and such crimes as, twice told, lift the hair and shake the soul; for
if they speak sooth, he has sailed under the black flag on the Indian
seas, and taken his share in the traffic of human life. Those who are
oldest remember dimly the days of his passion and his pride--days
when his hand was against every man, and when his very name was a
synonym for hate and wrath. The women-folk speak, moreover, of his
strength and beauty, when his white locks were golden as a lion's
mane, and his gray eyes bright with the light of the Viking race from
whom he drew his fiery blood.
While the mirth is loudest, pass out through the hall door into
the night. The great door closes with a clang; the brightness fades
into the murmuring darkness of the storm. Stand on the lonely upland,
and see the white flakes driving tumultuously from the sea; far
across the great marsh with Herndale Mere glistening in its centre
like a great shield, and beyond the dark sandhills which stretch
yonder like tossing billows for miles and miles beyond, the sea
itself is tossing and gleaming, and crashing on the hard and ribbed
sand of the lonely shore. The heavens are dark, and neither moon nor
star is visible; but the air is full of a faint mysterious
light--like moonshine, like starshine, like the light that is in the
filmy falling flakes. In this faint phosphorescence the frozen mere
flashes by fits and the distant sandhills loom dimly in the distance,
and on every side gathers the whiteness of the fallen sheets of snow.
Behind the great farm, with its windows flashing out like
bloodshot eyes, and its shadows coming or going on the crimson
blinds, stretch the upland fields, deep in drift of mingled snow and
sand; and inland, here and there, glance the lights from clustering
homesteads and solitary farms. A lamp is burning in every home
tonight, for all the folk are awake, and the coming of the Christ is
close at hand.
A long lane, deep with many a waggon rut, and closed on either
side by blackthorn hedges, leads from the upland, across fields and
meadows, to the highway, only a mile along which is the village, and
the quaint old village church. Listen closely, and the faint peal of
bells comes to your ear in the very teeth of the wind!--and look,
even as you listen, lights are creeping up the lane, and soon,
shadows of human forms loom behind the lights, and you see the carol
singers, with William Ostler from the Rose and Crown at their head,
coming along, lanthorns in hand, to sing at the farm door.
William Ostler staggers as he comes, and tumbles sprawling into
the snow; whereat there is loud laughter and scuffling of heavy
hobnailed feet. Young men in heavy woollen coats, and girls in red
cloaks with warm hoods, and little boys and girls following behind,
come trooping along the lane. Now they meet the bitter blast upon the
upland, and the lanthorns are blown out, but with the light from the
farm windows to guide them, they come stamping along, and, facing the
hall door, range themselves in a row. Then William with a tipsy
hiccough, gives out the word, and the voices ring out loud and clear.
Scarcely has the carol begun, when all sounds cease within the
farm; the dance has ceased, and all are standing still to listen. As
the last note dies away, the door swings open, and Farmer Thorpe,
with face like a ribstone pippin, and white hair blowing in the wind,
stands on the threshold, with shining faces peeping out behind him in
a blaze of rosy light.
'Come in, come in!' he cries, cheerily. 'Welcome all!'
Stamping the snow from their boots, shaking it from their
garments, they troop in and gather together at the kitchen end of the
hall, where warm spiced ale is poured for them, and chucks of
home-made cake put into their chilly hands. Left outside in the dark,
the village children pelt each other with snowballs, and run races in
the snow, and shout shrilly in through the keyhole, and beat with
tiny mittened hands on the mighty door.
It is close on midnight now. The carol-singers have gone their
ways, to make their music elsewhere, and get good entertainment for
their pains. The house is full of the pleasant smell of meat and
drink.
But the great hall is empty; empty, that is to say, save for the
old form sitting before the fire. There he crouches still, conscious
of little save the pleasant warmth; breathing faintly, otherwise not
stirring hand or limb.
The musicians, the labourers, the farm maidens, are busy feasting
in the kitchen; whence comes, through the half-closed doors, the
sound of load guffaws, of clattering dishes and jingling glasses, of
busy, shuffling feet. There is plenty of rough fare, with libations
of strong beer and cider and ginger-ale. In the low-roofed
dining-room, which opens out up three oaken steps at the other end of
the hall, the genteeler portion of the company sit round the supper
board,--a snow-white cloth of linen, piled with roast and boiled
meats, fat capons, knuckles of ham and veal, Christmas cakes and
puddings, great rosy-cheeked apples, foaming jugs of ale, flasks of
ruby-coloured rum, and black bottles of foreign vintage. Farmer
Thorpe heads the table, in his swallow-tailed coat of bottle-green,
his long buff waistcoat with snowy cambric at the breast and throat,
his great silver chain with dangling charms and seals; and facing
him, at the other end, is Mary his good dame, splendid in silk and
flowered brocade, with a cap, to crown all, that is the envy and
admiration of every matron in the happy group. On either side are
ranged the guests in their degree,--Squire Orchardson of the Willows,
a spare thin-visaged man in deep mourning; having the place of honour
at the farmer's right hand, and pretty Mabel Orchardson, the squire's
only daughter, blushing not far away, with young Harry Thorpe, a tall
yeoman of twenty-one, to ply her with sweet things and sweeter looks,
and to whisper tender nothings in her ear. The light of swinging
lamps and country-made candies gleams all round upon happy faces, red
and bright, with fine shadows behind of oaken furniture and
wainscoted walls. The mirth is real, though solemn; for the wine has
not yet had time to tell its tale. The old folks pledge each other in
old-fashioned style; healths go round; pretty maidens sip out of the
glasses of their cousins and lovers, while fond feet meet, and knees
touch, under the table. There is a clatter of dishes and knives and
forks, a murmur of voices, which only ceases at intervals, when the
wind shakes the house and causes the roof and walls to quake again.
But all at once, above the crying of the wind and above all the
noise of the feast, rises a sound so shrill and terrible that all
mirth ceases, and the company listen in terror. It sounds like a
human shriek, coming through the half-closed door that leads to the
hall--a human shriek, or something superhuman, so strangely does it
ring through the merry house. Hark, again! There can be no doubt now.
It is the shriek of a man's voice, sharp, fierce, and terrible.
The more timid among the company--both men and women--keep their
seats, shiver, and look at one another; the braver spirits, headed by
Farmer Thorpe, push through the open door, and gather on the steps
leading down into the hall.
In the middle of the hall stands, ghastly pale now, and terrified,
the swarthy boy from Barbadoes, his hands clenched, his eyes staring,
every fibre of him trembling with terror. Near to him is another boy,
stronger and bigger, of coarser make and breed; young Walter Thorpe,
the farmer's nephew, whose father lives down at the Warren. A little
way off their little cousin, Mary Farringford, crouches dumb with
terror, her large blue eyes dilated and misty with timid tears.
All the three children gaze one way--the dark boy fascinated, like
a murderer caught in the act, with the murderous look of hate and
venom found by fear upon his face and frozen there; young Walter a
little frightened too, but preserving a certain loutish stolidity;
little Mary quivering like a reed. All gaze towards the great
fireplace, for there, still fixed in his chair, but with head erect,
eyes dilating, and skinny finger pointing, sits the old man, awake at
last indeed!
His mouth is still open, panting, and it is clear now that the
shriek which startled the company came from his throat. His finger
points to the dark boy, who recoils in dread; but his eyes are fixed,
not on the boy's face, but on a glittering object which lies upon the
floor, close to the boy's feet.
An open clasp-knife, with dagger-like blade and steel spring, the
kind of knife that seamen use, too often, upon one another.
Farmer Thorpe steps into the hall, with the wondering company
behind him.
'What is the matter?' he exclaims. 'Who was it that screamed out?'
Walter Thorpe, who has recovered his composure, shuffles his feet,
grins stupidly, and jerks his thumb at the old man.
'Him!' he replies with characteristic indifference to grammar.
'And what--what's this?' cries the farmer, following the old man's
eyes and looking at the knife. 'Eh, eh, whose knife is this?'
'His!' replies Walter again, nodding his head at the other boy.
'Edgar's!' exclaims the voice of the widow Marjorie Wells; and as
she speaks she comes forward very pale, and touches her son with an
angry hand. 'Edgar, what does it mean?'
He scowls, and makes no answer.
'Have you been quarrelling? she continues sternly. 'How dare you
quarrel, you wicked boy?'
'He struck me,' pants Edgar, still with the murderous look in his
face.
'No, I didn't,' cries Walter.
'Yes you did.'
'I didn't--leastways till you pushed me against little Mary and
threw her down. Then when I slapt your face, you pulled out that
knife, and tried to stick me like a pig!'
A murmur of horror runs through the company.
'You hear, madam?' says Farmer Thorpe, sharply. 'I think your
boy's to blame, and if he was my son, I'd give him a sound thrashing.
Fancy the young imp carrying a knife like that, and trying to use it
too.'
'Edgar is passionate,' says the widow, haughtily; 'but I daresay
he was provoked.'
'He said that I was black,' cries Edgar, looking up at his mother
with his great eyes, 'and that when I was a man I ought to marry a
black woman--and cousin Mary laughed--and so I pushed him; and when
he struck me, I pulled out my knife, and I would have stabbed him, if
grandfather had not screeched out.'
'Fine doings o' Christmastide,' exclaims Farmer Thorpe, shaking
his head grimly; 'and look you now at father,' he continues, passing
across to the old man, who still keeps the same position, with eyes
staring and finger pointing. 'How goes it, father? Come, come, what
ails you now?'
At the voice of his son, the old man drops his outstretched arm,
and begins to mutter quietly to himself.
'Eh?' says Farmer Thorpe, putting down his ear to listen. 'Speak
up, father.'
The words are faint and feeble exceedingly, but they are just
intelligible:
'Take--away--the knife!'
At a signal from the farmer, one of the neighbours lifts the knife
from the floor, touches the spring, closes it, and hands it over to
the farmer, who forthwith consigns it to the lowest depths of his
breeches' pocket. All the company look on, breathless, as if upon a
Veritable miracle--the dead coming back to life.
There is a pause. Then again the feeble voice comes from the
worn-out frame.
'My son John.'
'Here, father.'
'Call them!--call the children!'
For a moment the farmer is puzzled, but seeing the old man's eyes
again wander towards young Edgar Wells, he begins to comprehend.
'Come here,' he says sharply; 'grandfather wants you.'
The boy at first shrinks back, then, with natural courage, forces
a smile of bravado, and comes boldly forward. As he passes into the
crimson firelight, the old man's eyes perceive him, and the wrinkled
face lightens. But the next instant the feeble eyes look round
disappointed.
'Both,' he murmurs--'both my children.'
Again the farmer is puzzled, but his good dame, with woman's wit,
hits the mark at once.
'I think he wants our nephew Walter,' she says softly. 'Go to him,
Walter.'
With a sheepish grin, Walter Thorpe steps forward, and so the two
boys stand face-to-face close to the old man's knee. As his feeble
gaze falls upon them, his lips tremble, and he gazes vacantly from
one to the other from beneath his rheumy lids. Then suddenly reaching
out one hand, he holds Walter by the jacket-sleeve, and with the
other, which trembles like a leaf, tries to clutch at Edgar. But
Edgar, startled by the sudden movement, has shrunk back afraid.
'What doth he mean?' whispers a neighbour.
'Now, God be praised!' says Dame Thorpe, 'I think he means the
lads to make friends. See, Marjorie, how he feels out to touch your
boy; and hark, what is he saying?'
They listen closely, and at last they catch the words:
'The children--put their hands into mine.'
At a look from the farmer, Walter puts his coarse brown hand
between the old man's trembling fingers, which close over it and
clutch it convulsively. But Edgar scowls and hangs aloof, till his
mother comes forward and touches him.
'Put out your hand--at once!'
Thus urged, the boy partly stretches out his arm, when the widow
takes his hand and places it, like the other's, between the old man's
fingers. As the hands of the two boys touch in that sinewy cage,
which now holds them firm as iron, their eyes meet with a momentary
gleam of defiance, then fall.
'Hush!' murmurs Dame Thorpe, softly; and there is a long silence.
The old man's lips move, but no sound comes from them. His eyes no
longer seek the faces around him, but are half-closed, as if in
prayer.
Presently there is a faint murmur. The farmer bends down his ear,
and catches the words, murmured very feebly,...
'Love one another.'...
Deeper stillness follows, and a solemn awe fills the hearts of all
the company. Presently the old man's hands relax, and with a quiet
sigh, he leans back smiling in his chair. His dim eyes open and look
round, his lips begin to move quietly again.
'When I was a boy...'
They catch no more, for the words die away, and he seems to fall
into a doze, perhaps into a dream of the days that once have been.
While he thus lies, and while the company return with spirits
solemnised to table, let us stay by him in the lonely hall, and with
eyes fixed upon the fire, recall the troubled memories of his life.