The Pirate Part 44

I went half as far as the haven to look after them, but they had vanished. I think I saw a boat put off, however,--some one bound for the Haaf, I suppose.--I would we had good news of this fis.h.i.+ng--there was Norna left us in anger,--and then these corpse-lights!--Well, G.o.d help the while! I am an old man, and can but wish that all were well over.--But how now, my pretty Minna? tears in your eyes!--And now that I see you in the fair moonlight, barefooted, too, by Saint Magnus!--Were there no stockings of Zetland wool soft enough for these pretty feet and ankles, that glance so white in the moonbeam?--What, silent!--angry, perhaps," he added, in a more serious tone, "at my nonsense? For shame, silly maiden!--Remember I am old enough to be your father, and have always loved you as my child."

"I am not angry," said Minna, constraining herself to speak--"but heard you nothing?--saw you nothing?--They must have pa.s.sed you."

"They?" said Claud Halcro; "what mean you by they?--is it the corpse-lights?--No, they did not pa.s.s by me, but I think they have pa.s.sed by you, and blighted you with their influence, for you are as pale as a spectre.--Come, come, Minna," he added, opening a side-door of the dwelling, "these moonlight walks are fitter for old poets than for young maidens--And so lightly clad as you are! Maiden, you should take care how you give yourself to the breezes of a Zetland night, for they bring more sleet than odours upon their wings.--But, maiden, go in; for, as glorious John says--or, as he does not say--for I cannot remember how his verse chimes--but, as I say myself, in a pretty poem, written when my muse was in her teens,--

Menseful maiden ne'er should rise, Till the first beam tinge the skies; Silk-fringed eyelids still should close, Till the sun has kiss'd the rose; Maiden's foot we should not view, Mark'd with tiny print on dew, Till the opening flowerets spread Carpet meet for beauty's tread--

Stay, what comes next?--let me see."

When the spirit of recitation seized on Claud Halcro, he forgot time and place, and might have kept his companion in the cold air for half an hour, giving poetical reasons why she ought to have been in bed. But she interrupted him by the question, earnestly p.r.o.nounced, yet in a voice which was scarcely articulate, holding Halcro, at the same time, with a trembling and convulsive grasp, as if to support herself from falling,--"Saw you no one in the boat which put to sea but now?"

"Nonsense," replied Halcro; "how could I see any one, when light and distance only enabled me to know that it was a boat, and not a grampus?"

"But there must have been some one in the boat?" repeated Minna, scarce conscious of what she said.

"Certainly," answered the poet; "boats seldom work to windward of their own accord.--But come, this is all folly; and so, as the Queen says, in an old play, which was revived for the stage by rare Will D'Avenant, 'To bed--to bed--to bed!'"

They separated, and Minna's limbs conveyed her with difficulty, through several devious pa.s.sages, to her own chamber, where she stretched herself cautiously beside her still sleeping sister, with a mind hara.s.sed with the most agonizing apprehensions. That she had heard Cleveland, she was positive--the tenor of the songs left her no doubt on that subject. If not equally certain that she had heard young Mertoun's voice in hot quarrel with her lover, the impression to that effect was strong on her mind. The groan, with which the struggle seemed to terminate--the fearful indication from which it seemed that the conqueror had borne off the lifeless body of his victim--all tended to prove that some fatal event had concluded the contest. And which of the unhappy men had fallen?--which had met a b.l.o.o.d.y death?--which had achieved a fatal and a b.l.o.o.d.y victory?--These were questions to which the still small voice of interior conviction answered, that her lover Cleveland, from character, temper, and habits, was most likely to have been the survivor of the fray. She received from the reflection an involuntary consolation which she almost detested herself for admitting, when she recollected that it was at once darkened with her lover's guilt, and embittered with the destruction of Brenda's happiness for ever.

"Innocent, unhappy sister!" such were her reflections; "thou that art ten times better than I, because so unpretending--so una.s.suming in thine excellence! How is it possible that I should cease to feel a pang, which is only transferred from my bosom to thine?"

As these cruel thoughts crossed her mind, she could not refrain from straining her sister so close to her bosom, that, after a heavy sigh, Brenda awoke.

"Sister," she said, "is it you?--I dreamed I lay on one of those monuments which Claud Halcro described to us, where the effigy of the inhabitant beneath lies carved in stone upon the sepulchre. I dreamed such a marble form lay by my side, and that it suddenly acquired enough of life and animation to fold me to its cold, moist bosom--and it is yours, Minna, that is indeed so chilly.--You are ill, my dearest Minna!

for G.o.d's sake, let me rise and call Euphane Fea.--What ails you? has Norna been here again?"

"Call no one hither," said Minna, detaining her; "nothing ails me for which any one has a remedy--nothing but apprehensions of evil worse than even Norna could prophesy. But G.o.d is above all, my dear Brenda; and let us pray to him to turn, as he only can, our evil into good."

They did jointly repeat their usual prayer for strength and protection from on high, and again composed themselves to sleep, suffering no word save "G.o.d bless you," to pa.s.s betwixt them, when their devotions were finished; thus scrupulously dedicating to Heaven their last waking words, if human frailty prevented them from commanding their last waking thoughts. Brenda slept first, and Minna, strongly resisting the dark and evil presentiments which again began to crowd themselves upon her imagination, was at last so fortunate as to slumber also.

The storm which Halcro had expected began about daybreak,--a squall, heavy with wind and rain, such as is often felt, even during the finest part of the season, in these lat.i.tudes. At the whistle of the wind, and the clatter of the rain on the s.h.i.+ngle-roofing of the fishers' huts, many a poor woman was awakened, and called on her children to hold up their little hands, and join in prayer for the safety of the dear husband and father, who was even then at the mercy of the disturbed elements. Around the house of Burgh-Westra, chimneys howled, and windows clashed. The props and rafters of the higher parts of the building, most of them formed out of wreck-wood, groaned and quivered, as fearing to be again dispersed by the tempest. But the daughters of Magnus Troil continued to sleep as softly and as sweetly as if the hand of Chantrey had formed them out of statuary-marble. The squall had pa.s.sed away, and the sunbeams, dispersing the clouds which drifted to leeward, shone full through the lattice, when Minna first started from the profound sleep into which fatigue and mental exhaustion had lulled her, and, raising herself on her arm, began to recall events, which, after this interval of profound repose, seemed almost to resemble the baseless visions of the night. She almost doubted if what she recalled of horror, previous to her starting from her bed, was not indeed the fiction of a dream, suggested, perhaps, by some external sounds.

"I will see Claud Halcro instantly," she said; "he may know something of these strange noises, as he was stirring at the time."

With that she sprung from bed, but hardly stood upright on the floor, ere her sister exclaimed, "Gracious Heaven! Minna, what ails your foot--your ankle?"

She looked down, and saw with surprise, which amounted to agony, that both her feet, but particularly one of them, was stained with dark crimson, resembling the colour of dried blood.

Without attempting to answer Brenda, she rushed to the window, and cast a desperate look on the gra.s.s beneath, for there she knew she must have contracted the fatal stain. But the rain, which had fallen there in treble quant.i.ty, as well from the heavens, as from the eaves of the house, had washed away that guilty witness, if indeed such had ever existed. All was fresh and fair, and the blades of gra.s.s, overcharged and bent with rain-drops, glittered like diamonds in the bright morning sun.

While Minna stared upon the spangled verdure, with her full dark eyes fixed and enlarged to circles by the intensity of her terror, Brenda was hanging about her, and with many an eager enquiry, pressed to know whether or how she had hurt herself?

"A piece of gla.s.s cut through my shoe," said Minna, bethinking herself that some excuse was necessary to her sister; "I scarce felt it at the time."

"And yet see how it has bled," said her sister. "Sweet Minna," she added, approaching her with a wetted towel, "let me wipe the blood off--the hurt may be worse than you think of."

But as she approached, Minna, who saw no other way of preventing discovery that the blood with which she was stained had never flowed in her own veins, harshly and hastily repelled the proffered kindness. Poor Brenda, unconscious of any offence which she had given to her sister, drew back two or three paces on finding her service thus unkindly refused, and stood gazing at Minna with looks in which there was more of surprise and mortified affection than of resentment, but which had yet something also of natural displeasure.

"Sister," said she, "I thought we had agreed but last night, that, happen to us what might, we would at least love each other."

"Much may happen betwixt night and morning!" answered Minna, in words rather wrenched from her by her situation, than flowing forth the voluntary interpreters of her thoughts.

"Much may indeed have happened in a night so stormy," answered Brenda; "for see where the very wall around Euphane's plant-a-cruive has been blown down; but neither wind nor rain, nor aught else, can cool our affection, Minna."

"But that may chance," replied Minna, "which may convert it into"----

The rest of the sentence she muttered in a tone so indistinct, that it could not be apprehended; while, at the same time, she washed the blood-stains from her feet and left ankle. Brenda, who still remained looking on at some distance, endeavoured in vain to a.s.sume some tone which might re-establish kindness and confidence betwixt them.

"You were right," she said, "Minna, to suffer no one to help you to dress so simple a scratch--standing where I do, it is scarce visible."

"The most cruel wounds," replied Minna, "are those which make no outward show--Are you sure you see it at all?"

"O, yes!" replied Brenda, framing her answer as she thought would best please her sister; "I see a very slight scratch; nay, now you draw on the stocking, I can see nothing."

"You do indeed see nothing," answered Minna, somewhat wildly; "but the time will soon come that all--ay, all--will be seen and known."

So saying, she hastily completed her dress, and led the way to breakfast, where she a.s.sumed her place amongst the guests; but with a countenance so pale and haggard, and manners and speech so altered and so bewildered, that it excited the attention of the whole company, and the utmost anxiety on the part of her father Magnus Troil. Many and various were the conjectures of the guests, concerning a distemperature which seemed rather mental than corporeal. Some hinted that the maiden had been struck with an evil eye, and something they muttered about Norna of the Fitful-head; some talked of the departure of Captain Cleveland, and murmured, "it was a shame for a young lady to take on so after a landlouper, of whom no one knew any thing;" and this contemptuous epithet was in particular bestowed on the Captain by Mistress Baby Yellowley, while she was in the act of wrapping round her old skinny neck the very handsome owerlay (as she called it) wherewith the said Captain had presented her. The old Lady Glowrowrum had a system of her own, which she hinted to Mistress Yellowley, after thanking G.o.d that her own connexion with the Burgh-Westra family was by the la.s.s's mother, who was a canny Scotswoman, like herself.

"For, as to these Troils, you see, Dame Yellowley, for as high as they hold their heads, they say that ken," (winking sagaciously,) "that there is a bee in their bonnet;--that Norna, as they call her, for it's not her right name neither, is at whiles far beside her right mind,--and they that ken the cause, say the Fowd was some gate or other linked in with it, for he will never hear an ill word of her. But I was in Scotland then, or I might have kend the real cause, as weel as other folk. At ony rate there is a kind of wildness in the blood. Ye ken very weel daft folk dinna bide to be contradicted; and I'll say that for the Fowd--he likes to be contradicted as ill as ony man in Zetland. But it shall never be said that I said ony ill of the house that I am sae nearly connected wi'. Only ye will mind, dame, it is through the Sinclairs that we are akin, not through the Troils,--and the Sinclairs are kend far and wide for a wise generation, dame.--But I see there is the stirrup-cup coming round."

"I wonder," said Mistress Baby to her brother, as soon as the Lady Glowrowrum turned from her, "what gars that muckle wife dame, dame, dame, that gate at me? She might ken the blude of the Clinkscales is as gude as ony Glowrowrum's amang them."

The guests, meanwhile, were fast taking their departure, scarcely noticed by Magnus, who was so much engrossed with Minna's indisposition, that, contrary to his hospitable wont, he suffered them to go away unsaluted. And thus concluded, amidst anxiety and illness, the festival of Saint John, as celebrated on that season at the house of Burgh-Westra; adding another caution to that of the Emperor of Ethiopia,--with how little security man can reckon upon the days which he destines to happiness.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] I cannot suppress the pride of saying, that these lines have been beautifully set to original music, by Mrs. Arkwright, of Derbys.h.i.+re.

[13] The celebrated Sortes Virgilianae were resorted to by Charles I. and his courtiers, as a mode of prying into futurity.

CHAPTER IV.

But this sad evil which doth her infest, Doth course of natural cause far exceed, And housed is within her hollow breast, That either seems some cursed witch's deed, Or evill spright that in her doth such torment breed.

_Fairy Queen, Book III., Canto III._

The term had now elapsed, by several days, when Mordaunt Mertoun, as he had promised at his departure, should have returned to his father's abode at Jarlshof, but there were no tidings of his arrival. Such delay might, at another time, have excited little curiosity, and no anxiety; for old Swertha, who took upon her the office of thinking and conjecturing for the little household, would have concluded that he had remained behind the other guests upon some party of sport or pleasure.

But she knew that Mordaunt had not been lately in favour with Magnus Troil; she knew that he proposed his stay at Burgh-Westra should be a short one, upon account of his father's health, to whom, notwithstanding the little encouragement which his filial piety received, he paid uniform attention. Swertha knew all this, and she became anxious. She watched the looks of her master, the elder Mertoun; but, wrapt in dark and stern uniformity of composure, his countenance, like the surface of a midnight lake, enabled no one to penetrate into what was beneath. His studies, his solitary meals, his lonely walks, succeeded each other in unvaried rotation, and seemed undisturbed by the least thought about Mordaunt's absence.

At length such reports reached Swertha's ear, from various quarters, that she became totally unable to conceal her anxiety, and resolved, at the risk of provoking her master into fury, or perhaps that of losing her place in his household, to force upon his notice the doubts which afflicted her own mind. Mordaunt's good-humour and goodly person must indeed have made no small impression on the withered and selfish heart of the poor old woman, to induce her to take a course so desperate, and from which her friend the Ranzelman endeavoured in vain to deter her.

Still, however, conscious that a miscarriage in the matter, would, like the loss of Trinculo's bottle in the horse-pool, be attended not only with dishonour, but with infinite loss, she determined to proceed on her high emprize with as much caution as was consistent with the attempt.

We have already mentioned, that it seemed a part of the very nature of this reserved and unsocial being, at least since his retreat into the utter solitude of Jarlshof, to endure no one to start a subject of conversation, or to put any question to him, that did not arise out of urgent and pressing emergency. Swertha was sensible, therefore, that, in order to open the discourse favourably which she proposed to hold with her master, she must contrive that it should originate with himself.