About the same time she heard Sunlocks question the priest concerning her, asking what the mother of little Michael was like to look upon. And the priest answered that if the eyes of an old curmudgeon like himself could see straight, she was comely beyond her grade in life, and young, too, though her brown hair had sometimes a shade of gray, and gentle and silent, and of a soft and touching voice.
"I've heard her voice once," said Sunlocks. "And her husband was an Icelander, and he is dead, you say?"
"Yes," said the priest; "and she's like myself in one thing."
"And what is that?" said Sunlocks.
"That she has never been able to look at anybody else," said the priest. "And that's why she is here, you must know, burying herself alive on old Grimsey."
"Oh," said Sunlocks, in the low murmur of the blind, "if God had but given me this woman, so sweet, so true, so simple, instead of her – of her – and yet – and yet – "
"Gracious heavens!" thought Greeba, "he is falling in love with me."
At that, the hot flush overspread her cheeks again, and her dark eyes danced, and all her loveliness flowed back upon her in an instant. And then a subtle fancy, a daring scheme, a wild adventure broke on her heart and head, and made every nerve in her body quiver. She would let him go on; he should think she was the other woman; she would draw him on to love her, and one day when she held him fast and sure, and he was hers, hers, hers only forever and ever, she would open her arms and cry, "Sunlocks, Sunlocks, I am Greeba, Greeba!"
It was while she was in the first hot flush of this wild thought, never doubting but the frantic thing was possible, for love knows no impediments, that the apothecary came from Husavik, saying he was sent by some unknown correspondent named Adam Fairbrother, who had written from London. He examined the eyes of Michael Sunlocks by the daylight first, but the season being the winter season, and the daylight heavy with fog from off the sea, he asked for a candle, and Greeba was called to hold it while he examined the eyes again. Never before had she been so near to her husband throughout the two years that she had lived under the same roof with him, and now that she stood face to face with him, within sound of his very breathing, with nothing between them but the thin gray film that lay over his dear eyes, she could not persuade herself but that he was looking at her and seeing her. Then she began to tremble, and presently a voice said,
"Steadily, young woman, steadily, or your candle may fall on the good master's face."
She tried to compose herself, but could not, and when she had recovered from her first foolish dread, there came a fear that was not foolish – a fear of the verdict of the apothecary. Waiting for this in those minutes that seemed to be hours, she knew that she was on the verge of betraying herself, and however she held her breath she could see that her bosom was heaving.
"Yes," said the apothecary, calmly, "yes, I see no reason why you should not recover your sight."
"Thank God!" said Michael Sunlocks.
"Thank God again," said the priest.
And Greeba, who had dropped the candle to the floor at length, had to run from the room on the instant, lest the cry of her heart should straightway be the cry of her lips as well, "Thank God, again and again, forever and forever."
And, being back in her own apartment, she plucked up her child into her arms, and cried over him, and laughed over him, and whispered strange words of delight into his ear, mad words of love, wild words of hope.
"Yes, yes," she whispered, "he will recover his sight, and see his little son, and know him for his own, his own, his own. Oh, yes, yes, yes, he will know him, he will know him, for he will see his own face, his own dear face, in little Michael's."
But next day, when the apothecary had gone, leaving lotions and drops for use throughout a month, and promising to return at the end of it, Greeba's new joy made way for a new terror, as she reflected that just as Sunlocks would see little Michael if he recovered his sight, so he would see herself. At that thought all her heart was in her mouth again, for she told herself that if Sunlocks saw her he would also see what deception she had practiced in that house, and would hate her for it, and tell her, as he had told her once before, that it came of the leaven of her old lightness that had led her on from false-dealing to false-dealing, and so he would turn his back upon her or drive her from him.
Then in the cruel war of her feelings she hardly knew whether to hope that Sunlocks should recover his sight, or remain as he was. Her pity cried out for the one, and her love for the other. If he recovered, at least there would be light for him in his dungeon, though she might not be near to share it. But if he remained as he was, she would be beside him always, his second sight, his silent guardian spirit, eating her heart out with hungry love, but content and thanking God.
"Why couldn't I leave things as they were?" she asked herself, but she was startled out of the selfishness of her love by a great crisis that came soon afterwards.
Now Michael Sunlocks had been allowed but little intercourse with the world during the two and a half years of his imprisonment since the day of his recapture at the Mount of Laws. While in the prison at Reykjavik he had heard the pitiful story of that day; who his old yoke-fellow had been, what he had done and said, and how at last, when his brave scheme had tottered to ruin, he had gone out of the ken and knowledge of all men. Since Sunlocks came to Grimsey he had written once to Adam Fairbrother, asking tenderly after the old man's own condition, earnestly after Greeba's material welfare, and with deep affectionate solicitude for the last tidings of Jason. His letter never reached its destination, for the Governor of Iceland was the postmaster as well. And Adam on his part had written twice to Michael Sunlocks, once from Copenhagen where (when Greeba had left for Grimsey) he had gone by help of her money from Reykjavik, thinking to see the King of Denmark in his own person; and once from London, whereto he had followed on when that bold design had failed him. But Adam's letters shared the fate of the letter of Sunlocks, and thus through two long years no news of the world without had broken the silence of that lonely home on the rock of the Arctic seas.
But during that time there had been three unwritten communications from Jorgen Jorgensen. The first came after some six months in the shape of a Danish sloop of war, which took up its moorings in the roadstead outside; the second after a year, in the shape of a flagstaff and flag which were to be used twice a day for signalling to the ship that the prisoner was still in safe custody; the third after two years, in the shape of a huge lock and key, to be placed on some room in which the prisoner was henceforward to be confined. These three communications, marking in their contrary way the progress of old Adam's persistent suit, first in Denmark and then in England, were followed after a while by a fourth. This was a message from the Governor at Reykjavik to the old priest at Grimsey, that, as he valued his livelihood and life he was to keep close guard and watch over his prisoner, and, if need be, to warn him that a worse fate might come to him at any time.
Now, the evil hour when this final message came was just upon the good time when the apothecary from Husavik brought the joyful tidings that Sunlocks might recover his sight, and the blow was the heavier for the hope that had gone before it. All Grimsey shared both, for the fisherfolk had grown to like the pale stranger who, though so simple in speech and manner, had been a great man in some way that they scarcely knew – having no one to tell them, being so far out of the world – but had fallen upon humiliation and deep dishonor. Michael Sunlocks himself took the blow with composure, saying it was plainly his destiny and of a piece with the rest of his fate, wherein no good thing had ever come to him without an evil one coming on the back of it. The tender heart of the old priest was thrown into wild commotion, for Sunlocks had become, during the two years of their life together, as a son to him, a son that was as a father also, a stay and guardian, before whom his weakness – that of intemperance – stood rebuked.
But the trouble of old Sir Sigfus was as nothing to that of Greeba. In the message of the Governor she saw death, instant death, death without word or warning, and every hour of her life thereafter was beset with terrors. It was the month of February; and if the snow fell from the mossy eaves in heavy thuds, she thought it was the muffled tread of the guards who were to come for her husband; and if the ice-floes that swept down from Greenland cracked on the coast of Grimsey, she heard the shot that was to end his life. When Sunlocks talked of destiny she cried, and when the priest railed at Jorgen Jorgensen (having his own reason to hate him) she cursed the name of the tyrant. But all the while she had to cry without tears and curse only in the dark silence of her heart, though she was near to betraying herself a hundred times a day.
"Oh, it is cruel," she thought, "very, very cruel. Is this what I have waited for all this weary, weary time?"
And though so lately her love had fought with her pity to prove that it was best for both of them that Sunlocks should remain blind, she found it another disaster now, in the dear inconsistency of womanhood, that he should die on the eve of regaining his sight.
"He will never see his boy," she thought, "never, never, never now."
Yet she could hardly believe it true that the cruel chance could befall. What good would the death of Sunlocks do to anyone? What evil did it bring to any creature that he was alive on that rock at the farthest ends of the earth and sea? Blind, too, and helpless, degraded from his high place, his young life wrecked, and his noble gifts wasted! There must have been some mistake. She would go out to the ship and ask if it was not so.
And with such wild thoughts she hurried off to the little village at the edge of the bay. There she stood a long hour by the fisherman's jetty, looking wistfully out to where the sloop of war lay, like a big wooden tub, between gloomy sea and gloomy sky, and her spirit failed her, and though she had borrowed a boat she could go no further.
"They might laugh at me, and make a jest of me," she thought, "for I cannot tell them that I am his wife."
With that, she went her way back as she came, crying on the good powers above to tell her what to do next, and where to look for help. And entering in at the porch of her own apartments, which stood aside from the body of the house, she heard voices within, and stopped to listen. At first she thought they were the voices of her child and her husband; but though one of them was that of little Michael, the other was too deep, too strong, too sad for the voice of Sunlocks.
"And so your name is Michael, my brave boy. Michael! Michael!" said the voice, and it was strange and yet familiar. "And how like you are to your mother, too! How like! How very like!" And the voice seemed to break in the speaker's throat.
Greeba grew dizzy, and stumbled forward. And, as she entered the house, a man rose from the settle, put little Michael to the ground, and faced about to her. The man was Jason.
CHAPTER VII.
The Gospel of Renunciation
I
What had happened in the great world during the two years in which Michael Sunlocks had been out of it is very simple and easily told. Old Adam Fairbrother had failed at London as he had failed at Copenhagen, and all the good that had come of his efforts had ended in evil. It was then that accident helped him in his despair.
The relations of England and Denmark had long been doubtful, for France seemed to be stepping between them. Napoleon was getting together a combination of powers against England, and in order to coerce Denmark into using her navy – a small but efficient one – on the side of the alliance, he threatened to send a force overland. He counted without the resources of Nelson, who, with no more ado than setting sail, got across to Copenhagen, took possession of every ship of war that lay in Danish waters, and brought them home to England in a troop.
When Adam heard of this he saw his opportunity in a moment, and hurrying away to Nelson at Spithead he asked if among the Danish ships that had been captured there was a sloop of war that had lain near two years off the island of Grimsey. Nelson answered, No, but that if there was such a vessel still at liberty he was not of a mind to leave it to harass him. So Adam told why the sloop was there, and Nelson, waiting for no further instructions, despatched an English man-of-war, with Adam aboard of her, to do for the last of the Danish fleet what had been done for the body of it, and at the same time to recover the English prisoner whom she had been sent to watch.
Before anything was known of this final step of Nelson, his former proceeding had made a great noise throughout Europe, where it was loudly condemned as against the law of nations, by the rascals who found themselves outwitted. When the report reached Reykjavik, Jorgen Jorgensen saw nothing that could come of it but instant war between Denmark and England, and nothing that could come of war with England but disaster to Denmark, for he knew the English navy of old. So to make doubly sure of his own position in a tumult wherein little things would of a certainty be seized up with great ones, he conceived the idea of putting Michael Sunlocks out of the way, and thus settling one harassing complication. Then losing no time he made ready a despatch to the officer in command of the sloop of war off Grimsey, ordering him to send a company of men ashore immediately to execute the prisoner lying in charge of the priest of the island.
Now this despatch, whereof the contents became known throughout Reykjavik in less time than Jorgen took to write and seal it, had to be carried to Grimsey by two of his bodyguard. But the men were Danes, and as they did not know the way across the Bursting-sand desert, an Iceland guide had to be found for them. To this end the two taverns of the town were beaten up for a man, who at that season – it was winter, and the snow lay thick over the lava streams and the sand – would adventure so far from home.
And now it was just at this time, after two-and-a-half years in which no man had seen him or heard of him, that Jason returned to Reykjavik. Scarce anyone knew him. He was the wreck of himself, a worn, torn, pitiful, broken ruin of a man. People lifted both hands at sight of him, but he showed no self-pity. Day after day, night after night, he frequented the taverns. He drank as he had never before been known to drink; he laughed as he had never been heard to laugh; he sang as he had never been heard to sing, and to all outward appearance he was nothing now but a shameless, graceless, disorderly, abandoned profligate.
Jorgen Jorgensen heard that Jason had returned, and ordered his people to fetch him to Government House. They did so, and Jorgen and Jason stood face to face. Jorgen looked at Jason as one who would say, "Dare you forget the two men whose lives you have taken?" And Jason looked back at Jorgen as one who would answer, "Dare you remember that I spared your own life?" Then, without a word to Jason, old Jorgen turned to his people and said, "Take him away." So Jason went back to his dissipations, and thereafter no man said yea or nay to him.
But when he heard of the despatch, he was sobered by it in a moment, and when the guards came on their search for a guide to the tavern where he was, he leapt to his feet and said, "I'll go."
"You won't pass, my lad," said one of the Danes, "for you would be dead drunk before you crossed the Basket Slope Hill."
"Would I?" said Jason, moodily, "who knows?" And with that he shambled out. But in his heart he cried, "The hour has come at last! Thank God! Thank God!"
Before he was missed he had gone from Reykjavik, and made his way to the desert with his face towards Grimsey.
The next day the guards found their guide and set out on their journey.
The day after that a Danish captain arrived at Reykjavik from Copenhagen, and reported to Jorgen Jorgensen that off the Westmann Islands he had sighted a British man-of-war, making for the northern shores of Iceland. This news put Jorgen into extreme agitation, for he guessed at its meaning in an instant. As surely as the war ship was afloat she was bound for Grimsey, to capture the sloop that lay there, and as surely as England knew of the sloop, she also knew of the prisoner whom it was sent to watch. British sea-captains, from Drake downwards, had been a race of pirates and cut-throats, and if the captain of this ship, on landing at Grimsey, found Michael Sunlocks dead, he would follow on to Reykjavik and never take rest until he had strung up the Governor and his people to the nearest yardarm.
So thinking in the wild turmoil of his hot old head, wherein everything he had thought before was turned topsy-turvy, Jorgen Jorgensen decided to countermand his order for the execution of Sunlocks. But his despatch was then a day gone on its way. Iceland guides were a tribe of lazy vagabonds, not a man or boy about his person was to be trusted, and so Jorgen concluded that nothing would serve but that he should set out after the guards himself. Perhaps he would find them at Thingvellir, perhaps he would cross them on the desert, but at least he would overtake them before they took boat at Husavik. Twelve hours a day he would ride, old as he was, if only these skulking Iceland giants could be made to ride after him.
Thus were four several companies at the same time on their way to Grimsey: the English man-of-war from Spithead to take possession of the Danish sloop; the guards of the Governor to order the execution of Michael Sunlocks; Jorgen Jorgensen to countermand the order; and Red Jason on his own errand known to no man.
The first to reach was Jason.
II
When Jason set little Michael from his knee to the floor, and rose to his feet as Greeba entered, he was dirty, bedraggled, and unkempt; his face was jaded and old-looking, his skin shoes were splashed with snow, and torn, and his feet were bleeding; his neck was bare, and his sheepskin coat was hanging to his back only by the woollen scarf that was tied about his waist. Partly from shock at this change, and partly from a confused memory of other scenes – the marriage festival at Government House, the night trial in the little chamber of the Senate, the jail, the mines, and the Mount of Laws – Greeba staggered at sight of Jason and would have cried aloud and fallen. But he caught her in his arms in a moment, and whispered her in a low voice at her ear to be silent, for that he had something to say that must be heard by no one beside herself.
She recovered herself instantly, drew back as if his touch had stung her, and asked with a look of dread if he had known she was there.
"Yes," he answered.
"Where have you come from?"
"Reykjavik."
She glanced down at his bleeding feet, and said, "on foot?"
"On foot," he answered.
"When did you leave?"
"Five days ago."
"Then you have walked night and day across the desert?"
"Night and day."
"Alone?"
"Yes, alone."
She had become more eager at every question, and now she cried, "What has happened? What is going to happen? Do not keep it from me. I can bear it, for I have borne many things. Tell me why have you come?"
"To save your husband," said Jason. "Hush! Listen!"
And then he told her, with many gentle protests against her ghastly looks of fear, of the guards that were coming with the order for the execution of Michael Sunlocks. Hearing that, she waited for no more, but fell to a great outburst of weeping. And until her bout was spent he stood silent and helpless beside her, with a strong man's pains at sight of a woman's tears.
"How she loves him!" he thought, and again and again the word rang in the empty place of his heart.
But when she had recovered herself he smiled as well as he was able for the great drops that still rolled down his own haggard face, and protested once more that there was nothing to fear, for he himself had come to forestall the danger, and things were not yet so far past help but there was still a way to compass it.
"What way?" she asked.
"The way of escape," he answered.
"Impossible," she said. "There is a war ship outside, and every path to the shore is watched."
He laughed at that, and said that if every goat track were guarded, yet would he make his way to the sea. And as for the war ship outside, there was a boat within the harbor, the same that he had come by, a Shetland smack that had made pretence to put in for haddock, and would sail at any moment that he gave it warning.
She listened eagerly, and, though she saw but little likelihood of escape, she clutched at the chance of it.
"When will you make the attempt?" she asked.
"Two hours before dawn to-morrow," he answered.
"Why so late?"
"Because the nights are moonlight."
"I'll be ready," she whispered.
"Make the child ready, also," he said.
"Indeed, yes," she whispered.
"Say nothing to anyone, and if anyone questions you, answer as little as you may. Whatever you hear, whatever you see, whatever I may do or pretend to do, speak not a word, give not a sign, change not a feature. Do you promise?"
"Yes," she whispered, "yes, yes."
And then suddenly a new thought smote her.
"But, Jason," she said, with her eyes aside, and her fingers running through the hair of little Michael, "but, Jason," she faltered, "you will not betray me?"
"Betray you?" he said, and laughed a little.
"Because," she added quietly, "though I am here, my husband does not know me for his wife. He is blind, and cannot see me, and for my own reasons I have never spoken to him since I came."
"You have never spoken to him?" said Jason.
"Never."
"And how long have you lived in this house?"
"Two years."
Then Jason remembered what Sunlocks had told him at the mines, and in another moment he had read Greeba's secret by the light of his own.
"I understand," he said, sadly, "I think I understand."
She caught the look of sorrow in his eyes, and said, "But, Jason, what of yourself?"
At that he laughed again, and tried to carry himself off with a brave gayety.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"At Akureyri, Husavik, Reykjavik, the desert – everywhere, nowhere," he answered.
"What have you been doing?"
"Drinking, gaming, going to the devil – everything, nothing."
And at that he laughed once more, loudly and noisily, forgetting his own warning.
"Jason," said Greeba, "I wronged you once, and you have done nothing since but heap coals of fire on my head."
"No, no; you never wronged me," he said. "I was a fool – that was all. I made myself think that I cared for you. But it's all over now."
"Jason," she said again, "it was not altogether my fault. My husband was everything to me; but another woman might have loved you and made you happy."
"Ay, ay," he said, "another woman, another woman."
"Somewhere or other she waits for you," said Greeba. "Depend on that."
"Ay, somewhere or other," he said.
"So don't lose heart, Jason," she said; "don't lose heart."
"I don't," he said, "not I;" and yet again he laughed. But, growing serious in a moment, he said, "And did you leave home and kindred and come out to this desolate place only that you might live under the same roof with your husband?"
"My home was his home," said Greeba, "my kindred his kindred, and where he was there had I to be."
"And have you waited through these two long years," he said, "for the day and the hour when you might reveal yourself to him?"
"I could have waited for my husband," said Greeba, "through twice the seven long years that Jacob waited for Rachel."
He paused a moment, and then said, "No, no, I don't lose heart. Somewhere or other, somewhere or other – that's the way of it." Then he laughed louder than ever, and every hollow note of his voice went through Greeba like a knife. But in the empty chamber of his heart he was crying in his despair, "My God! how she loves him! How she loves him!"
III
Half-an-hour later, when the winter's day was done, and the candles had been lighted, Greeba went in to the priest, where he sat in his room alone, to say that a stranger was asking to see him.
"Bring the stranger in," said the priest, putting down his spectacles on his open book, and then Jason entered.
"Sir Sigfus," said Jason, "your good name has been known to me ever since the days when my poor mother mentioned it with gratitude and tears."
"Your mother?" said the priest; "who was she?"
"Rachel Jorgen's daughter, wife of Stephen Orry."
"Then you must be Jason."
"Yes, your reverence."
"My lad, my good lad," cried the priest, and with a look of joy he rose and laid hold of both Jason's hands. "I have heard of you. I hear of you every day, for your brother is with me. Come, let us go to him. Let us go to him. Come!"
"Wait," said Jason. "First let me deliver you a message concerning him."
The old priest's radiant face fell instantly to a deep sadness. "A message?" he said. "You have never come from Jorgen Jorgensen?"
"No."
"From whom, then?"
"My brother's wife," said Jason.
"His wife?"
"Has he never spoken of her?"
"Yes, but as one who had injured him, and bitterly and cruelly wronged and betrayed him."
"That may be so, your reverence," said Jason, "but who can be hard on the penitent and the dying?"
"Is she dying?" said the priest.
Jason dropped his head. "She sends for his forgiveness," he said. "She cannot die without it."
"Poor soul, poor soul!" said the priest.
"Whatever her faults, he cannot deny her that little mercy," said Jason.
"God forbid it!" said the priest.
"She is alone in her misery, with none to help and none to pity her," said Jason.
"Where is she?" said the priest.
"At Husavik," said Jason.
"But what is her message to me?"
"That you should allow her husband to come to her."
The old priest lifted his hands in helpless bewilderment, but Jason gave him no time to speak.
"Only for a day," said Jason, quickly, "only for one day, an hour, one little hour. Wait, your reverence, do not say no. Think, only think! The poor woman is alone. Let her sins be what they may, she is penitent. She is calling for her husband. She is calling on you to send him. It is her last request – her last prayer. Grant it, and heaven will bless you."
The poor old priest was cruelly distressed.
"My good lad," he cried, "it is impossible. There is a ship outside to watch us. Twice a day I have to signal with the flag that the prisoner is safe, and twice a day the bell of the vessel answers me. It is impossible, I say, impossible, impossible! It cannot be done. There is no way."
"Leave it to me, and I will find a way," said Jason.
But the old priest only wrung his hands, and cried, "I dare not; I must not; it is more than my place is worth."
"He will come back," said Jason.
"Only last week," said the priest, "I had a message from Reykjavik which foreshadowed his death. He knows it, we all know it."
"But he will come back," said Jason, again.
"My good lad, how can you say so? Where have you lived to think it possible? Once free of the place where the shadow of death hangs over him, what man alive would return to it."
"He will come back," said Jason, firmly; "I know he will, I swear he will."
"No, no," said the old man. "I'm only a simple old priest, buried alive these thirty years, or nearly, on this lonely island of the frozen seas, but I know better than that. It isn't in human nature, my good lad, and no man that breathes can do it. Then think of me, think of me!"
"I do think of you," said Jason, "and to show you how sure I am that he will come back, I will make you an offer."
"What is it?" said the priest.
"To stand as your bondman while he is away," said Jason.
"What! Do you know what you are saying?" cried the priest.
"Yes," said Jason, "for I came to say it."
"Do you know," said the priest, "that any day, at any hour, the sailors from yonder ship may come to execute my poor prisoner?"
"I do. But what of that?" said Jason. "Have they ever been here before?"
"Never," said the priest.
"Do they know your prisoner from another man?"
"No."
"Then where is your risk?" said Jason.
"My risk? Mine?" cried the priest, with the great drops bursting from his eyes, "I was thinking of yours. My lad, my good lad, you have made me ashamed. If you dare risk your life, I dare risk my place, and I'll do it; I'll do it."
"God bless you!" said Jason.
"And now let us go to him," said the priest. "He is in yonder room, poor soul. When the order came from Reykjavik that I was to keep close guard and watch on him, nothing would satisfy him but that I should turn the key on him. That was out of fear for me. He is as brave as a lion, and as gentle as a lamb. Come, the sooner he hears his wife's message the better for all of us. It will be a sad blow to him, badly as she treated him. But come!"
So saying, the old priest was fumbling his deep pockets for a key, and shuffling along, candle in hand, towards a door at the end of a low passage, when Jason laid hold of his arm and said in a whisper, "Wait! It isn't fair that I should let you go farther in this matter. You should be ignorant of what we are doing until it is done."
"As you will," said the priest.
"Can you trust me?" said Jason.
"That I can."
"Then give me the key."
The old man gave it.
"When do you make your next signal?"
"At daybreak to-morrow."
"And when does the bell on the ship answer it?"
"Immediately."
"Go to your room, your reverence," said Jason, "and never stir out of it until you hear the ship's bell in the morning. Then come here, and you will find me waiting on this spot to return this key to you. But first answer me again, Do you trust me?"