An Orkney Maid by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

Scotsmen are a pertinacious brood;
Fitly you wear the thistle in your cap,
As in your grim theology.
O we're not all so fierce! God knows you'll find,
Well-combed and smooth-licked gentlemen enough,
Who will rejoice with you
To sneer at Calvin's close-wedged creed.
--BLACKIE.

Sow not in Sorrow,
Fling your seed abroad, and know
God sends tomorrow,
The rain to make it grow.
--BLACKIE.

There are epochs in every life that cut it sharply asunder, its continuity is broken and things can never be the same again. This was the dominant feeling that came to Thora Ragnor, as she sat with her mother one afternoon in early January. It was a day of Orkney's most uncomfortable and depressing kind, the whole island being swept by drifting clouds of vapour, which not only filled the atmosphere but also the houses, so that everything was to the touch damp and uncomfortable. Nothing could escape its miserable contact, even sitting on the hearthstone its power was felt; and until a good northwester came to dissipate the damp moisture, nobody expected much from any one's temper.

Thora was restless and unhappy. Her life appeared to have been suddenly deprived of all joy and sunshine. She felt as if everything was at an end, or might as well be, and her mother's placid, peaceful face irritated her. How could she sit knitting mufflers for the soldiers in the trenches, and not think of Boris and also of Ian, whom they had all conspired to send to the same danger and perhaps death? She could not understand her mother's serenity. It occurred to her this afternoon, that she might have run away with Ian to Shetland and there her sisters would have seen her married; and she did not do this, she obeyed her parents, and what did she get for it? Loneliness and misery and her lover sent far away from her. Oh, those moments when Virtue has failed to reward us and we regret having served her! To the young, they are sometimes very bitter.

And her mother's calmness! It not only astonished, it angered her. How could she sit still and not talk of Boris and Ian? It was a necessary relief to Thora, their names were at her lips all day long. But Thora had yet to learn that it is the middle-aged and the old who have the power of hoping through everything, because they have the knowledge that the soul survives all its adventures. This is the great inspiration, it is the good wine which God keeps to the last. The old, the way-worn, the faint and weary, they know this as the young can never know it.

However, we may say to bad weather, as to all other bad things, "this, too, will pass," and in a couple of days the sky was blue, the sun shining, and the atmosphere fresh and clear and full of life-giving energy. Ships of all kinds were hastening into the harbour and the mail boat, broad-bottomed and strongly built, was in sight. Then there was a little real anxiety. There was sure to be letters, what news would they bring? Some people say there is no romance in these days. Very far wrong are they. These sealed bits of white paper hold very often more wonderful romances than any in the Thousand Nights of story telling.

Rahal's and Thora's anxiety was soon relieved. A messenger from the warehouse came quickly to the house, with a letter from Ragnor to Rahal and a letter from Ian to Thora. Ragnor's letter said they had had a rough voyage southward, the storm being in their faces all the way to Leith. There they left the boat and took a train for London, from which place they went as quickly as possible to Spithead, fearing to miss the ship sailing for the Crimea on the eleventh. Ragnor said he had seen Ian safely away to Sebastopol and observed that he was remarkably cheerful and satisfied. He spoke then of his own delight with London and regretted that he had not made arrangements which would permit him to stay a week or two longer there.

Thora's letter was a genuine love letter, for Ian was deeply in love and everything he said was in the superlative mood. Lovers like such letters. They are to them the sacred writings. It did not seem ridiculous to Thora to be called "an angel of beauty and goodness, the rose of womanhood, the lily on his heart, his star of hope, the sunshine of his life," and many other extravagant impossibilities. She would have been disappointed if Ian had been more matter-of-fact and reasonable.

So there was now comparative happiness in the house of Ragnor, for though the master's letters were never much more than plain statements of doings or circumstances, they satisfied Rahal. It is not every man that knows how to write to a woman, even if he loves her; but women have a special divinity in reading love letters, and they know beyond all doubting the worth of words as affected by those who use them.

Ragnor gave himself a whole week in London and before leaving that city for Edinburgh he wrote a few lines home, saying he intended to stay in London over the following Sabbath and hear Canon Liddon preach. On Monday he would reach Edinburgh and on Tuesday have an interview with Dr. Macrae and then take the first boat for home. They could now wait easily, the silence had been broken, the weather was good, they had "The History of Pendennis" and "David Copperfield" to read, their little duties and little cares to attend to, and they were not at all unhappy.

At length, the master was to be home _that_ day. If the wind was favourable, he might arrive about two o'clock, but Rahal thought the boat would hardly manage it before three with the wind in her teeth, or it might be nearer four. The house was all ready for him, spick and span from roof to cellar and a dinner of the good things he particularly liked in careful preparation. And, after all, he came a little earlier than was expected.

"Dear Conall," said Rahal, "I have been watching for thee, but I thought it would be four o'clock, ere thou made Kirkwall."

"Not with Donald Farquar sailing the boat. The way he manages a boat is beyond reason."

"How is that?"

"He talks to her, as if she was human. He scolds and coaxes her and this morning he promised to paint and gild her figurehead, if she got into Kirkwall before three. Then every sailor on board helped her and the wind changed a point or two and that helped her, and now and then Farquar pushed her on, with a good or bad word, and she saved herself by just eleven minutes."

"And how well thou art looking! Never have I seen thee so handsome before, never! What hast thou been doing to Conall Ragnor?"

"I will tell thee. When I had bid Ian good-bye, I resolved to take a week's holiday in London and as I walked down the Strand, I noticed that every one looked at me, not unkindly but curiously, and when I looked at the men who looked at me, I saw we were different. I went into a barber's first, and had my hair cut like Londoners wear it, short and smart, and not thick and bushy, like mine was."

"Well then, thy hair was far too long but they have cut off all thy curls."

"I like the wanting of them. They looked very womanish. I'm a deal more purpose-like without them. Then I went to a first-class tailor-man and he fit me out with the suit I'm wearing. He said it was 'the correct thing for land or water.' What dost thou think of it?"

"Nothing could be more becoming to thee."

"Nay then, I got a Sabbath Day suit that shames this one. And I bought a church hat and a soft hat that beats all, and kid gloves, and a good walking stick with a fancy knob."

"Thou art not needing a walking stick for twenty years yet."

"Well then, the English gentlemen always carries a walking stick. I think they wouldn't know the way they were going without one. At last, I went to the shoemakers, and he made me take off my 'Wellingtons.' He said no one wore them now, and he shod me, as thou sees, very comfortably. I like the change."

Then they heard Thora calling them, and Ragnor taking Rahal's hand hastened to answer the call. She was standing at the foot of the stairway, and her father kissed her and as he did so whispered--"All is well, dear one. After dinner, I will tell thee." Then he took her hand, and the three in one went together to the round table, set so pleasantly near to the comfortable fireside. Standing there, hand-clasped, the master said those few words of adoration and gratitude that turned the white-spread board into a household altar. Dinner was on the table and its delicious odours filled the room and quickly set Ragnor talking.

"I will tell you now, what I saw in London," he said. "Ian is a story good enough to keep until after dinner. I saw him sail away from Spithead, and he went full of hope and pluck and sure of success. Then I took the first train back to London. I got lodgings in a nice little hotel in Norfolk Street, just off the Strand, and London was calling me all night long."

"Thou could not see much, Father, in one week," said Thora.

"I saw the Queen and the Houses of Parliament, and I saw the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey and the Crystal Palace. And I have heard an oratorio, with a chorus of five hundred voices and Sims Reeves as soloist. I have been to Drury Lane, and the Strand Theatres, to a big picture gallery, and a hippodrome. My dear ones, the end of one pleasure was just the beginning of another; in one week, I have lived fifty years."

Any one can understand how a new flavour was added to the food they were eating by such conversation. Not all the sauces in Christendom could have made it so piquant and appetizing. Ragnor carved and ate and talked, and Rahal and Thora listened and laughed and asked endless questions, and when the mind enters into a meal, it not only prolongs, it also sweetens and brightens it. I suppose there may be in every life two or three festivals, that stand out from all others--small, unlooked-for meetings, perhaps--where love, hope, wonder and happy looking-forward, made the food taste as if it had been cooked in Paradise. Where, at least for a few hours, a mortal might feel that man had been made only a little lower than the angels.

Now, if any of my readers have such a memory, let them close the book, shut their eyes and live it over again. It was probably a foretaste of a future existence, where we