THE RISE OF MICHAEL SUNLOCKS.
"Dear Greeba," the letter ran, "I am sorely ashamed of my long
silence, which is deeply ungrateful towards your father, and very
ungracious towards you. Though something better than four years have
passed away since I left the little green island, the time has seemed
to fly more swiftly than a weaver's shuttle, and I have been immersed
in many interests and beset by many anxieties. But I well know that
nothing can quite excuse me, and I would wrong the truth if I were to
say that among fresh scenes and fresh faces I have borne about me
day and night the memory of all I left behind. So I shall not pretend
to a loyalty whereof I have given you no assurance, but will just
pray of you to take me for what I truly am--a rather thankless
fellow--who has sometimes found himself in danger of forgetting old
friends in the making of new ones, and been very heartily ashamed of
himself. Nevertheless, the sweetest thoughts of these four years have
been thoughts of the old home, and the dearest hope of my heart has
been to return to it some day. That day has not yet come; but it is
coming, and now I seem to see it very near. So, dear Greeba, forgive
me if you can, or at least bear me no grudge, and let me tell you of
some of the strange things that have befallen me since we parted.
"When I came to Iceland it was not to join the Latin school of the
venerable Bishop Petersen (a worthy man and good Christian, whom it
has become by happiness to call my friend), but on an errand of
mercy, whereof I may yet say much but can tell you little now. The
first of my duties was to find a good woman and true wife who had
suffered deeply by the great fault of another, and, having found her,
to succor her in her distress. It says much for the depth of her
misfortunes that, though she had been the daughter of the
Governor-General, and the inhabitants of the capital of Iceland are
fewer than two thousand in all, I was more than a week in Reykjavik
before I came upon any real news of her. When I found her at last she
was in her grave. The poor soul had died within two months of my
landing on these shores, and the joiner of the cathedral was putting
a little wooden peg, inscribed with the initials of her name, over
her grave in the forgotten quarter of the cemetery where the dead
poor of this place are buried. Such was the close of the first
chapter of my quest.
"But I had still another duty, and, touched by the pathos of that
timeless death, I set about it with new vigor. This was to learn if
the unhappy soul had left a child behind her, and if she had done so
to look for it as I had looked for its mother, and succor it as I
would have succored her. I found that she had left a son, a lad of my
own age or thereabouts, and therefore less than twenty at that time.
Little seemed to be known about him, save that he had been his
mother's sole stay and companion, that they had both lived apart from
their neighbors, and much under the shadow of their distresses. At
her death he had been with her, and he had stood by her grave, but
never afterwards had he been seen by anyone who could make a guess as
to what had become of him. But, whilst I was still in the midst of my
search, the body of a young man came ashore on the island of Engy,
and though the features were no longer to be recognized, yet there
were many in the fishing quarter of this city who could swear, from
evidences of stature and of clothing, to its identity with him I
looked for; and thus the second chapter of my quest seemed to close
at a tomb.
"I cannot say that I was fully satisfied, for nothing that I had
heard of the boy's character seemed to agree with any thought of
suicide, and I noticed that the good old Lutheran priest who had sat
with the poor mother in her last hours shook his head at the mention
of it, though he would give no reasons for his determined unbelief.
But perhaps my zeal was flagging, for my search ceased from that
hour, and as often since as my conscience has reproached me with a
mission unfulfilled I have appeased it with the assurance that mother
and son are both gone, and death itself has been my sure abridgment.
"Some day, dear Greeba, I will tell you who sent me (which you may
partly guess) and who they were to whom I was sent. But it is like
the way of the world itself, that, having set ourselves a task, we
must follow it as regularly as the sun rises and sets, and the day
comes and the night follows, or once letting it slip it will drop
into a chaos. For a thing happened just at that moment of my wavering
which altered the current of my life, so that my time here, which was
to be devoted to an unselfish work, seems to have been given up to
personal ambitions.
"I have mentioned that the good woman had been the daughter of the
Governor-General. His name was Jorgen Jorgensen. He had turned her
adrift because of her marriage, which was in defiance of his wish,
and through all the years of her poverty he had either abandoned her
to her necessities, or her pride had hidden them from his knowledge.
But he had heard of her death when it came to pass, and by that time
his stubborn spirit had begun to feel the lonesomeness of his years,
and that life was slipping past him without the love and tenderness
of a child to sweeten it. So partly out of remorse, but mainly out of
selfishness, he had set out to find the son whom his daughter had
left behind her, thinking to give the boy the rightful place of a
grandson by his side. It was then that on the same search our paths
converged, and Jorgen Jorgensen met with me, and I with Jorgen
Jorgensen. And when the news reached Reykjavik of the body that had
come out of the sea at Engy, the Governor was among the first to give
credence to the rumor that the son of his daughter was dead. But
meantime he had found something in me to interest him, and now he
asked who I was, and what, and why I was come. His questions I
answered plainly, without concealment or any disguise, and when he
heard that I was the son of Stephen Orry, though he knew too well
what my father had been to him and to his daughter (all of which,
dear Greeba, you shall yet learn at length), he asked me to take that
place in his house that he had intended for his daughter's son.
"How I came to agree to this while I distrusted him and almost feared
him would take too long to tell. Only remember that I was in a
country foreign to me, though it was my father's home, that I was
trifling with my errand there, and had no solid business of life
beside. Enough for the present that I did so agree, and that I became
the housemate and daily companion of Jorgen Jorgensen. His treatment
of me varied with his moods, which were many. Sometimes it was harsh,
sometimes almost genial, and always selfish. I think I worked for him
as a loyal servant should, taking no account of his promises, and
never shutting my eyes to my true position or his real aims in having
me. And often and again when I remembered all that we both knew of
what had gone before, I thought the Fates themselves must shriek at
the turn of fortune's wheel that had thrown this man and me together
so.
"I say he was selfish; and truly he did all he could in the years I
was with him to drain me of my best strength of heart and brain,
but some of his selfish ends seemed to lie in the way of my own
advancement. Thus he had set his mind on my succeeding him in the
governorship, or at least becoming Speaker, and to that end he had me
elected to Althing, a legislative body very like to the House of
Keys. Violating thereby more than one regulation touching my age,
nationality and period of residence in Iceland. There he made his
first great error in our relations, for while I was a servant in his
house and office my mind and will were his, but when I became a
delegate they became my own, in charge for the people who elected me.
"It would be a long story to tell you of all that occurred in the
three years thereafter; how I saw many a doubtful scheme hatched
under my eyes without having the power or right to protest while I
kept the shelter of the Governor's roof; how I left his house and
separated from him; how I pursued my way apart from him, supported by
good men who gathered about me; how he slandered and maligned and
injured me through my father, whom all had known, and my mother, of
whom I myself had told him; how in the end he prompted the Danish
Government to propose to Althing a new constitution for Iceland,
curtailing her ancient liberties and violating her time-honored
customs, and how I led the opposition to this unworthy project and
defeated it. The end of all is that within these two months Iceland
has risen against the rule of Denmark as administered by Jorgen
Jorgensen, driving him away, and that I, who little thought to sit in
his place even in the days when he himself was plotting to put me
there, and would have fled from the danger of pushing from his stool
the man whose bread I had eaten, am at this moment president of a new
Icelandic republic.
"It will seem to you a strange climax that I am where I am after so
short a life here, coming as a youth and a stranger only four years
ago, without a livelihood and with little money (though more I might
perhaps have had), on a vague errand, scarcely able to speak the
language of the people, and understanding it merely from the
uncertain memories of childhood. And if above the pleasures of a true
patriotism--for I am an Icelander, too, proud of the old country and
its all but thousand years--there is a secret joy in my cup of
fortune, the sweetest part of it is that there are those--there is
one--in dear little Ellan Vannin who will, I truly think, rejoice
with me and be glad. But I am too closely beset by the anxieties that
have come with my success to give much thought to its vanities. Thus
in this first lull after the storm of our revolution, I have to be
busy with many active preparations. Jorgen Jorgensen has gone to
Copenhagen, where he will surely incite the Danish Government to
reprisals, though a powerful State might well afford to leave to its
freedom the ancient little nation that lives on a great rock of the
frozen seas. In view of this certainty, I have to organize some
native forces of defence, both on land and sea. One small colony of
Danish colonists who took the side of the Danish powers has had to be
put down by force, and I have removed the political prisoners from
the jail of Reykjavik, where they did no good, to the sulphur mines
at Krisuvik, where they are opening an industry that should enrich
the State. So you see that my hands are full of anxious labor, and
that my presence here seems necessary now. But if, as sanguine minds
predict, all comes out well in the end, and Denmark leaves us to
ourselves, or the powers of Europe rise against Denmark, and Iceland
remains a free nation, I will not forget that my true home is in the
dear island of the Irish Sea, and that good souls are there who
remember me and would welcome me, and that one of them was my dear
little playfellow long ago.
"And now, dear Greeba, you know what has happened to me since we
parted on that sweet night at the gate of Lague, but I know nothing
of all that has occurred to you. My neglect has been well punished by
my ignorance and my many fears.
"How is your father? Is the dear man well, and happy and prosperous?
He must be so, or surely there is no Providence dispensing justice in
this world.
"Are you well? To me the years have sent a tawny beard and a woeful
lantern jaw. Have they changed you greatly? Yet how can you answer
such a question? Only say that you are well, and have been always
well, and I will know the rest, dear Greeba--that the four years past
have only done what the preceding eight years did, in ripening the
bloom of the sweetest womanhood, in softening the dark light of the
most glorious eyes, and in smoothing the dimples of the loveliest
face that ever the sun of heaven shone upon.
"But, thinking of this, and trying to summon up a vision of you as
you must be now, it serves me right that I am tortured by fears I
dare not utter. What have you been doing all this time? Have you made
any new friends? I have made many, yet none that seem to have got as
close to me as the old ones are. One old friend, the oldest I can
remember, though young enough yet for beauty and sweet grace, is
still the closest to my heart. Do you know whom I mean? Greeba, do
you remember your promise? You could hardly speak to make it. I had
forgotten my manners so that I had left you little breath. Have you
forgotten? To me it is a delicious memory, and if it is not a painful
one to you, then all is well with both of us. But, oh, for the time
to come, when many a similar promise, and many a like breach of
manners, will wipe away the thought of this one! I am almost in love
with myself to think it was I who stood with you by the bridge at
Lague, and could find it in my heart, if it were only in my power, to
kiss the lips that kissed you. I'll do better than that some day.
What say you? But say nothing, for that's best, dearest. Ah,
Greeba--"
* * * * *
At this point there was a break in the letter, and what came after
was in a larger, looser, and more rapid handwriting.
"Your letter has this moment reached me. I am overwhelmed by the bad
news you send me. Your father has not yet come. Did his ship sail for
Reykjavik? Or was it for Hafnafiord? Certainly it may have put in at
the Orkneys, or the Faroes. But if it sailed a fortnight before you
wrote, it ought to be here now. I will make inquiries forthwith.
"I interrupted my letter to send a boat down the fiord to look. It is
gone. I can see it now skirting the Smoky Harbor on its way to the
Smoky Point. If your father comes back with it, he shall have a
thousand, thousand welcomes. The dear good man--how well I remember
that on the day I parted from him he rallied me on my fears, and
said he would yet come here to see me! Little did he think to come
like this. And the worst of his misfortunes have followed on his
generosities! Such bighearted men should have a store like the
widow's curse to draw from, that would grow no less, however often
they dipped into it. God keep him till we meet again and I hold once
more that hand of charity and blessing, or have it resting on my
head.
"I am anxious on your account also, dearest Greeba, for I know too
well what your condition must be in your mother's house. My dear
girl, forgive me for what I send you with this letter. The day I left
the island your father lent me fifty pounds, and now I repay it to
his daughter. So it is not a gift, and, if it were, you should still
take it from me, seeing there are no obligations among those who
love.
"The duties that hold me here are now for the first time irksome, for
I am longing for the chance of hastening to your side. But only say
that I may do so with your consent and all that goes with it, and I
will not lose a day more in sending a trustworthy person to you who
shall bring you here to rejoin your father and me. Write by the first
ship that will bring your letter. I shall not rest until I have heard
from you; and having heard in such words as my heart could wish, I
shall not sleep until you are with me, never, never to be parted from
me again as long as life itself shall last. Write, dearest
girl--write--write."
Here there was another break in the letter, and then came this
postscript.
"It is part of the penalty of life in these northern lands that for
nearly one-half of the year we are entirely cut off from intercourse
with the rest of the world, and are at the mercy of wind and sea for
that benefit during the other half. My letter has waited these seven
days for the passing of a storm before the ship that is to carry it
can sail. This interval has seen the return of the sloop that I sent
down the fiord as far as Smoky Point, but no tidings has she brought
back of the vessel your father sailed in, and no certain intelligence
has yet reached me from any other quarter. So let me not alarm you
when I add that a report has come to Reykjavik by a whaler on the
seas under Snaefell that an Irish schooner has lately been wrecked
near the mouth of some basaltic caves by Stappen, all hands being
saved, but the vessel gone to pieces, and crew and passengers trying
to make their way to the capital overland. I am afraid to fear, and
as much afraid to hope, that this may have been the ship that brought
your father; but I am fitting out an expedition to go along the coast
to meet the poor ship-broken company, for whoever they are they can
know little of the perils and privations of a long tramp across this
desolate country. If more and better news should come my way you
shall have it in its turn, but meantime bethink you earnestly whether
it is not now for you to come and to join me, and your father also,
if he should then be here, and, if not, to help me to search for him.
But it is barely just to you to ask so much without making myself
clear, though truly you must have guessed my meaning. Then, dear
Greeba, when I say 'Come,' I mean _Come to be my wife_. It sounds
cold to say it so, and such a plea is not the one my heart has
cherished; for through all these years I have heard myself whisper
that dear word through trembling lips, with a luminous vision of my
own face in your beautiful eyes before me. But that is not to be,
save in an aftermath of love, if you will only let the future bring
it. So, dearest love, my darling--more to me than place and power and
all the world can give--come to me--come--come--come."