“I will tell thee what thou must do – go home and tell the great news thyself.”
“I can not go into Suneva’s house. Thou should not ask that of me.”
“In the day of thy good fortune, be generous. Suneva Fae has a kind heart, and I blame thee much that there was trouble. Because God has forgiven thee, go without a grudging thought, and say – ‘Suneva, I was wrong, and I am sorry for the wrong; and I have good news, and want my father and thee to share it.’”
“No; I can not do that.”
“There is no ‘can’ in it. It is my will, Margaret, that thou go. Go at once, and take thy son with thee. The kind deed delayed is worth very little. To-day that is thy work, and we will not read or write. As for me, I will loose my boat, and I will sail about the bay, and round by the Troll Rock, and I will think of these things only.”
For a few minutes Margaret stood watching him drift with the tide, his boat rocking gently, and the fresh wind blowing his long white hair, and carrying far out to sea the solemnly joyful notes to which he was singing his morning psalm.
“Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy Godand not forgetful beOf all his gracious benefitshe hath bestowed on thee.Such pity as a father hathunto his children dear,Like pity shows the Lord to suchas worship him in fear."Ps. 103. v. 2. 13.1“Thou art a good man,” said Margaret to herself, as she waved her hand in farewell, and turned slowly homeward. Most women would have been impatient to tell the great news that had come to them, but Margaret could always wait. Besides, she had been ordered to go to Suneva with it, and the task was not a pleasant one to her. She had never been in her father’s house, since she left it with her son in her arms; and it was not an easy thing for a woman so proud to go and say to the woman who had supplanted her – “I have done wrong, and I am sorry for it.”
Yet it did not enter her mind to disobey the instructions given her; she only wanted time to consider how to perform them in the quietest, and least painful manner. She took the road by the sea shore, and sat down on a huge barricade of rocks. Generally such lonely communion with sea and sky strengthened and calmed her; but this morning she could not bring her mind into accord with it. Accidentally she dislodged a piece of rock, and it fell among the millions of birds sitting on the shelving precipices below her. They flickered with piercing cries in circles above her head, and then dropped like a shower into the ocean, with a noise like the hurrahing of an army. Impatient and annoyed, she turned away from the shore, across the undulating heathy plateau. She longed to reach her own room; perhaps in its seclusion she would find the composure she needed.
As she approached her house, she saw a crowd of boys and little Jan walking proudly in front of them. One was playing “Miss Flora McDonald’s reel” on a violin, and the gay strains were accompanied by finger snappings, whistling, and occasional shouts. “There is no quiet to be found anywhere, this morning,” thought Margaret, but her curiosity was aroused, and she went toward the children. They saw her coming, and with an accession of clamor hastened to meet her. Little Jan carried a faded, battered wreath of unrecognizable materials, and he walked as proudly as Pompey may have walked in a Roman triumph. When Margaret saw it, she knew well what had happened, and she opened her arms, and held the boy to her heart, and kissed him over and over, and cried out, “Oh, my brave little Jan, brave little Jan! How did it happen then? Thou tell me quick.”
“Hal Ragner shall tell thee, my mother;” and Hal eagerly stepped forward:
“It was last night, Mistress Vedder, we were all watching for the ‘Arctic Bounty;’ but she did not come, and this morning as we were playing, the word was passed that she had reached Peter Fae’s pier. Then we all ran, but thou knowest that thy Jan runs like a red deer, and so he got far ahead, and leaped on board, and was climbing the mast first of all. Then Bor Skade, he tried to climb over him, and Nichol Sinclair, he tried to hold him back, but the sailors shouted, ‘Bravo, little Jan Vedder!’ and the skipper he shouted ‘Bravo!’ and thy father, he shouted higher than all the rest. And when Jan had cut loose the prize, he was like to greet for joy, and he clapped his hands, and kissed Jan, and he gave him five gold sovereigns, – see, then, if he did not!” And little Jan proudly put his hand in his pocket, and held them out in his small soiled palm.
The feat which little Jan had accomplished is one which means all to the Shetland boy that his first buffalo means to the Indian youth. When a whaler is in Arctic seas, the sailors on the first of May make a garland of such bits of ribbons, love tokens, and keep-sakes, as have each a private history, and this they tie to the top of the main-mast. There it swings, blow high or low, in sleet and hail, until the ship reaches her home-port. Then it is the supreme emulation of every lad, and especially of every sailor’s son, to be first on board and first up the mast to cut it down, and the boy who does it, is the hero of the day, and has won his footing on every Shetland boat.
What wonder, then, that Margaret was proud and happy? What wonder that in her glow of delight the thing she had been seeking was made clear to her? How could she go better to Suneva than with this crowd of happy boys? If the minister thought she ought to share one of her blessings with Suneva, she would double her obedience, and ask her to share the mother’s as well as the wife’s joy.
“One thing I wish, boys,” she said happily, “let us go straight to Peter Fae’s house, for Hal Ragner must tell Suneva Fae the good news also.” So, with a shout, the little company turned, and very soon Suneva, who was busy salting some fish in the cellar of her house, heard her name called by more than fifty shrill voices, in fifty different keys.
She hurried up stairs, saying to herself, “It will be good news, or great news that has come to pass, no doubt; for when ill-luck has the day, he does not call any one like that; he comes sneaking in.” Her rosy face was full of smiles when she opened the door, but when she saw Margaret and Jan standing first of all, she was for the moment too amazed to speak.
Margaret pointed to the wreath: “Our Jan took it from the top-mast of the ‘Arctic Bounty;’” she said. “The boys brought him home to me, and I have brought him to thee, Suneva. I thought thou would like it.”
“Our Jan!” In those two words Margaret canceled every thing remembered against her. Suneva’s eyes filled, and she stretched out both her hands to her step-daughter.
“Come in, Margaret! Come in, my brave, darling Jan! Come in, boys, every one of you! There is cake, and wheat bread, and preserved fruit enough for you all; and I shall find a shilling for every boy here, who has kept Jan’s triumph with him.” And when Suneva had feasted the children she brought a leather pouch, and counting out £2 14s., sent them away, fiddling and singing, and shouting with delight.
But Margaret stayed; and the two women talked their bitterness over to its very root. For Suneva said: “We will leave nothing unexplained, and nothing that is doubtful. Tell me the worst thou hast thought, and the worst thou hast heard, and what I can not excuse, that I will say, ‘I am sorry for,’ and thou wilt forgive it, I know thou wilt.” And after this admission, it was easy for Margaret also to say, “I am sorry;” and when that part of the matter had been settled, she added, “Now then, Suneva, I have great good news to tell thee.”
But with the words Peter and the minister entered the house, and Margaret went to Dr. Balloch and said, “I have done all thou bid me; now then, thou tell my father and Suneva whatever thou told me. That is what thou art come for, I know it is.”
“Yes, it is so. I was in the store when thy little Jan and his companions came there with the gold given them, and when the sovereigns had been changed and every boy had got his shilling, I said to thy father, ‘Come home with me, for Margaret is at thy house, and great joy has come to it to-day.’”
Then he told again the whole story, and read aloud Jan’s letters; and Peter and Suneva were so amazed and interested, that they begged the minister to stay all day, and talk of the subject with them. And the good man cheerfully consented, for it delighted him to see Margaret and Suneva busy together, making the dinner and the tea, and sharing pleasantly the household cares that women like to exercise for those they love or respect. He looked at them, and then he looked at Peter, and the two men understood each other, without a word.
By and by, little Jan, hungry and weary with excitement, came seeking his mother, and his presence added the last element of joy to the reunited family. The child’s eager curiosity kept up until late the interest in the great subject made known that day to Peter and Suneva. For to Norsemen, slavery is the greatest of all earthly ills, and Peter’s eyes flashed with indignation, and he spoke of Snorro not only with respect, but with something also like a noble envy of his privileges.
“If I had twenty years less, I would man a ship of mine own, and go to the African coast as a privateer, I would that. What a joy I should give my two hands in freeing the captives, and hanging those slavers in a slack rope at the yard-arm.”
“Nay, Peter, thou would not be brutal.”
“Yes, I would be a brute with brutes; that is so, my minister. Even St. James thinks as I do – ‘He shall have judgment without mercy that showeth no mercy.’ That is a good way, I think. I am glad Snorro hath gone to look after them. I would be right glad if he had Thor’s hammer in his big hands.”
“He hath a Lancaster gun, Peter.”
“But that is not like seeing the knife redden in the hand. Oh, no!”
“Peter, we are Christians, and not heathens.”
“I am sorry if the words grieve thee. Often I have wondered why David wrote some of the hard words he did write. I wonder no more. He wrote them against the men who sell human life for gold. If I was Jan Vedder, I would read those words every morning to my men. The knife that is sharpened on the word of God, cuts deep – that is so.”
“Jan hath done his part well, Peter, and I wish that he could see us this night. It hath been a day of blessing to this house, and I am right happy to have been counted in it.”
Then he went away, but that night Margaret and her son once more slept in their old room under Peter Fae’s roof. It affected her to see that nothing had been changed. A pair of slippers she had forgotten still stood by the hearthstone. Her mother’s Bible had been placed upon her dressing table. The geranium she had planted, was still in the window; it had been watered and cared for, and had grown to be a large and luxuriant plant. She thought of the last day she had occupied that room, and of the many bitter hours she had spent in it, and she contrasted them with the joy and the hope of her return.
But when we say to ourselves, “I will be grateful,” it is very seldom the heart consents to our determination; and Margaret, exhausted with emotion, was almost shocked to find that she could not realize, with any degree of warmth, the mercy and blessing that had come to her. She was the more dissatisfied, because as soon as she was alone she remembered the message Tulloch had given her. It had remained all day undelivered, and quite forgotten. “How selfish I am,” she said wearily, but ere she could feel sensibly any regret for her fault she had fallen asleep.
In the morning it was her first thought, and as soon after breakfast as possible she went to Dr. Balloch’s. He seemed shocked at the news, and very much affected. “We have been true friends for fifty years, Margaret,” he said; “I never thought of his being ill, of his dying – dying.”
“He does not appear to fear death, sir.”
“No, he will meet it as a good man should. He knows well that death is only the veil which we who live call life. We sleep, and it is lifted.”
“Wilt thou see him to-day?”
“Yes, this morning. Thirty-eight years ago this month his wife died. It was a great grief to him. She was but a girl, and her bride-year was not quite worn out.”
“I have never heard of her.”
“Well, then, that is like to be. This is the first time I have spoken of Nanna Tulloch since she went away from us. It is long to remember, yet she was very lovely, and very much beloved. But thou knowest Shetlanders speak not of the dead, nor do they count any thing from a day of sorrow. However, thy words have brought many things to my heart. This day I will spend with my friend.”
The reconciliation which had taken place was a good thing for Margaret. She was inclined to be despondent; Suneva always faced the future with a smile. It was better also that Margaret should talk of Jan, than brood over the subject in her own heart; and nothing interested Suneva like a love-quarrel. If it were between husband and wife, then it was of double importance to her. She was always trying to put sixes and sevens at one. She persuaded Margaret to write without delay to Jan, and to request the Admiralty Office to forward the letter. If it had been her letter she would have written “Haste” and “Important” all over it. She never tired of calculating the possibilities of Jan receiving it by a certain date, and she soon fixed upon another date, when, allowing for all possible detentions, Jan’s next letter might be expected.
But perhaps, most of all, the reconciliation was good for Peter. Nothing keeps a man so young as the companionship of his children and grandchildren. Peter was fond and proud of his daughter, but he delighted in little Jan. The boy, so physically like his father, had many of Peter’s tastes and peculiarities. He loved money, and Peter respected him for loving it. There were two men whom Peter particularly disliked; little Jan disliked them also with all his childish soul, and when he said things about them that Peter did not care to say, the boy’s candor charmed and satisfied him, although he pretended to reprove it.
Jan, too, had a very high temper, and resented, quick as a flash, any wound to his childish self-esteem. Peter was fond of noticing its relationship to his own. One day he said to the boy: “Do that again and I will send thee out of the store.”
“If thou sends me out just once, I will never come in thy store again; no, I will not; never, as long as I live,” was the instant retort. Peter repeated it to Suneva with infinite pride and approval. “No one will put our little Jan out for nothing,” he said.
“Well, then, he is just like thee!” said the politic Suneva; and Peter’s face showed that he considered the resemblance as very complimentary.
CHAPTER XIV.
JAN’S RETURN
“For them the rod of chastisement flowered.”
A stranger suddenly dropped in these Shetland islands, especially in winter, would not unnaturally say, “how monotonously dreary life must be here! In such isolation the heart must lose its keen sense of sympathy, and be irresponsive and dumb.” That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life. Ever since Eve wept over her slain son, and Rebecca took the love-gifts of Isaac, this has been the case; and until that mighty angel, who stands on the sea and land, cries, “Time shall be no more,” the home loves, and the home trials, will be the center of humanity’s deepest and sweetest emotions. So, then, the little Shetland town had in it all the elements necessary for a life full of interest – birth and death, love and sorrow, the cruel hand and the generous hand, the house of mourning and the house of joy.
Just before Christmas-tide, Tulloch was sitting alone at midnight. His malady was too distressing to allow him to sleep, but a Norseman scorns to complain of physical suffering, and prefers, so long as it is possible, to carry on the regular routine of his life. He was unable to go much out, and his wasted body showed that it was under a constant torture, but he said nothing, only he welcomed Margaret and the doctor warmly, and seemed to be glad of their unspoken sympathy. It had been stormy all day, but the wind had gone down, and a pale moon glimmered above the dim, tumbling sea. All was quiet, not a footfall, not a sound except the dull roar of the waves breaking upon the beach.
Suddenly a woman’s sharp cry cut the silence like a knife. It was followed by sobs and shrieks and passing footsteps and the clamor of many voices. Every one must have noticed how much more terrible noises are at night than in the daytime; the silly laughter of drunkards and fools, the maniac’s shout, the piercing shriek of a woman in distress, seem to desecrate its peaceful gloom, and mock the slow, mystic panorama of the heavens. Tulloch felt unusually impressed by this night-tumult, and early in the morning sent his servant out to discover its meaning.
“It was Maggie Barefoot, sir; her man was drowned last night; she has six bairns and not a bread-winner among them. But what then? Magnus Tulloch went too, and he had four little lads – their mother died at Lammas-tide. They’ll be God’s bairns now, for they have neither kith nor kin. It is a sad business, I say that.”
“Go and bring them here.”
The order was given without consideration, and without any conscious intention. He was amazed himself when he had uttered it. The man was an old servant, and said hesitatingly, “Yes, but they are no kin of thine.”
“All the apples on the same tree have come from the same root, Bele; and it is like enough that all the Tullochs will have had one forbear. I would be a poor Tulloch to see one of the name wanting a bite and sup. Yes, indeed.”
He was very thoughtful after seeing the children, and when Dr. Balloch came, he said to him at once: “Now, then, I will do what thou hast told me to do – settle up my affairs with this world forever. Wilt thou help me?”
“If I think thou does the right thing, I will help thee, but I do not think it is right to give thy money to Margaret Vedder. She has enough and to spare. ‘Cursed be he that giveth unto the rich.’ It was Mahomet and Anti-Christ that said the words, but for all that they are good words.”
“I have no kin but a fifth cousin in Leith; he is full of gold and honor. All that I have would be a bawbee to him. But this is what I think, my money is Shetland money, made of Shetland fishers, and it ought to stay in Shetland.”
“I think that too.”
“Well, then, we are of one mind so far. Now my wish is to be bread-giver even when I am dead, to be bread-giver to the children whose fathers God has taken. Here are Magnus Tulloch’s four, and Hugh Petrie’s little lad, and James Traill’s five children, and many more of whom I know not. My houses, big and little, shall be homes for them. My money shall buy them meal and meat and wadmall to clothe them. There are poor lonely women who will be glad to care for them, eight or ten to each, and Suneva Fae and Margaret Vedder will see that the women do their duty. What thinkest thou?”
“Now, then, I think this, that God has made thy will for thee. Moreover, thou hast put a good thought into my heart also. Thou knows I brought in my hand a little money when I came to Shetland, and it has grown, I know not how. I will put mine with thine, and though we are two childless old men, many children shall grow up and bless us.”
Into this scheme Tulloch threw all his strength and foresight and prudence. The matter was urgent, and there were no delays, and no waste of money. Three comfortable fishermen’s cottages that happened to be vacant, were fitted with little bunks, and plenty of fleeces for bedding. Peat was stacked for firing, and meal and salted fish sent in; so that in three days twenty-three fatherless, motherless children were in warm, comfortable homes.
Suneva entered into the work with perfect delight. She selected the mothers for each cottage, and she took good care that they kept them clean and warm, that the little ones’ food was properly cooked, and their clothes washed and mended. If there were a sorrow or a complaint it was brought to her, and Suneva was not one to blame readily a child.
Never man went down to the grave with his hands so full of beneficent work as Tulloch. Through it he took the sacrament of pain almost joyfully, and often in the long, lonely hours of nightly suffering, he remembered with a smile of pleasure, the little children sweetly sleeping in the homes he had provided for them. The work grew and prospered wonderfully; never had there been a busier, happier winter in Lerwick. As was customary, there were tea-parties at Suneva’s and elsewhere nearly every night, and at them the women sewed for the children, while the men played the violin, or recited from the Sagas, or sung the plaintive songs of the Islands.
Margaret brought the dying man constant intelligence of his bounty: the children, one or two at a time, were allowed to come and see him; twice, leaning on Dr. Balloch, and his servant Bele, he visited the homes, and saw the orphans at their noonday meals. He felt the clasp of grateful hands, and the kiss of baby lips that could not speak their thanks. His last was the flower of his life-work and he saw the budding of it, and was satisfied with its beauty.
One morning in the following April, Margaret received the letter which Suneva had prophesied would arrive by the twentieth, if the weather were favorable. Nowhere in the world has the term, “weather permitting,” such significance as in these stormy seas. It is only necessary to look at the mail steamers, so strongly built, so bluff at the bows, and nearly as broad as they are long, to understand that they expect to have to take plenty of hard blows and buffetings. It was the first steamer that had arrived for months, and though it made the harbor in a blinding snow-storm, little Jan would not be prevented from going into the town to see if it brought a letter. For the boy’s dream of every thing grand and noble centered in his father. He talked of him incessantly; he longed to see him with all his heart.
Margaret also was restless and faint with anxiety; she could not even knit. Never were two hours of such interminable length. At last she saw him coming, his head bent to the storm, his fleet feet skimming the white ground, his hands deep in his pockets. Far off, he discovered his mother watching for him; then he stopped a moment, waved the letter above his head, and hurried onward. It was a good letter, a tender, generous, noble letter, full of love and longing, and yet alive with the stirring story of right trampling wrong under foot. The child listened to it with a glowing face:
“I would I were with my father and Snorro,” he said, regretfully.
“Would thou then leave me, Jan?”
“Ay, I would leave thee, mother. I would leave thee, and love thee, as my father does. I could stand by my father’s side, I could fire a gun, or reef a sail, as well as Snorro. I would not be afraid of any thing; no, I would not. It is such a long, long time till a boy grows up to be a man! When I am a man, thou shall see that I will have a ship of my own.”
It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it. Margaret never thought of the snow as any impediment. She went first to Suneva, and then to Dr. Balloch with her letter; and she was so full of happiness that she did not notice the minister was very silent and preoccupied. After a little, he said, “Margaret, I must go now to Tulloch; it has come to the last.”
“Well, then, I think he will be glad. He has suffered long and sorely.”
“Yet a little while ago he was full of life, eager for money, impatient of all who opposed him. Thou knowest how hard it often was to keep peace between him and thy father. Now he has forgotten the things that once so pleased him; his gold, his houses, his boats, his business, have dropped from his heart, as the toys drop from the hand of a sleepy child.”
“Father went to see him a week ago.”
“There is perfect peace between them now. Thy father kissed him when they said ‘good-by.’ When they meet again, they will have forgotten all the bitterness, they will remember only that they lived in the same town, and worshiped in the same church, and were companions in the same life. This morning we are going to eat together the holy bread; come thou with me.”
