The Pirate
round and facing her, while her glowing cheek was rivalled in the
deepness of its crimson, by as much of her neck and bosom as the upper
part of the half-laced boddice permitted to be visible,--"Even from you,
Minna," she said, "I will not endure this! You know that all my life I
have spoken the truth, and that I love the truth; and I tell you, that
Mordaunt Mertoun never in his life made distinction betwixt you and me,
until"----
Here some feeling of consciousness stopped her short, and her sister
replied, with a smile, "Until _when_, Brenda? Methinks, your love of
truth seems choked with the sentence you were bringing out."
"Until you ceased to do him the justice he deserves," said Brenda,
firmly, "since I must speak out. I have little doubt that he will not
long throw away his friendship on you, who hold it so lightly."
"Be it so," said Minna; "you are secure from my rivalry, either in his
friendship or love. But bethink you better, Brenda--this is no scandal
of Cleveland's--Cleveland is incapable of slander--no falsehood of Bryce
Snailsfoot--not one of our friends or acquaintance but says it has been
the common talk of the island, that the daughters of Magnus Troil were
patiently awaiting the choice of the nameless and birthless stranger,
Mordaunt Mertoun. Is it fitting that this should be said of us, the
descendants of a Norwegian Jarl, and the daughters of the first Udaller
in Zetland? or, would it be modest or maidenly to submit to it
unresented, were we the meanest lasses that ever lifted a milk-pail?"
"The tongues of fools are no reproach," replied Brenda, warmly; "I will
never quit my own thoughts of an innocent friend for the gossip of the
island, which can put the worst meaning on the most innocent actions."
"Hear but what our friends say," repeated Minna; "hear but the Lady
Glowrowrum; hear but Maddie and Clara Groatsettar."
"If I were to hear Lady Glowrowrum," said Brenda, steadily, "I should
listen to the worst tongue in Zetland; and as for Maddie and Clara
Groatsettar, they were both blithe enough to get Mordaunt to sit betwixt
them at dinner the day before yesterday, as you might have observed
yourself, but that your ear was better engaged."
"Your eyes, at least, have been but indifferently engaged, Brenda,"
retorted the elder sister, "since they were fixed on a young man, whom
all the world but yourself believes to have talked of us with the most
insolent presumption; and even if he be innocently charged, Lady
Glowrowrum says it is unmaidenly and bold of you even to look in the
direction where he sits, knowing it must confirm such reports."
"I will look which way I please," said Brenda, growing still warmer;
"Lady Glowrowrum shall neither rule my thoughts, nor my words, nor my
eyes. I hold Mordaunt Mertoun to be innocent,--I will look at him as
such,--I will speak of him as such; and if I did not speak to him also,
and behave to him as usual, it is in obedience to my father, and not for
what Lady Glowrowrum, and all her nieces, had she twenty instead of two,
could think, wink, nod, or tattle, about the matter that concerns them
not."
"Alas! Brenda," answered Minna, with calmness, "this vivacity is more
than is required for the defence of the character of a mere
friend!--Beware--He who ruined Norna's peace for ever, was a stranger,
admitted to her affections against the will of her family."
"He was a stranger," replied Brenda, with emphasis, "not only in birth,
but in manners. She had not been bred up with him from her youth,--she
had not known the gentleness, the frankness, of his disposition, by an
intimacy of many years. He was indeed a stranger, in character, temper,
birth, manners, and morals,--some wandering adventurer, perhaps, whom
chance or tempest had thrown upon the islands, and who knew how to mask
a false heart with a frank brow. My good sister, take home your own
warning. There are other strangers at Burgh-Westra besides this poor
Mordaunt Mertoun."
Minna seemed for a moment overwhelmed with the rapidity with which her
sister retorted her suspicion and her caution. But her natural
loftiness of disposition enabled her to reply with assumed composure.
"Were I to treat you, Brenda, with the want of confidence you show
towards me, I might reply that Cleveland is no more to me than Mordaunt
was; or than young Swartaster, or Lawrence Ericson, or any other
favourite guest of my father's, now is. But I scorn to deceive you, or
to disguise my thoughts.--I love Clement Cleveland."
"Do not say so, my dearest sister," said Brenda, abandoning at once the
air of acrimony with which the conversation had been latterly conducted,
and throwing her arms round her sister's neck, with looks, and with a
tone, of the most earnest affection,--"do not say so, I implore you! I
will renounce Mordaunt Mertoun,--I will swear never to speak to him
again; but do not repeat that you love this Cleveland!"
"And why should I not repeat," said Minna, disengaging herself gently
from her sister's grasp, "a sentiment in which I glory? The boldness,
the strength and energy, of his character, to which command is natural,
and fear unknown,--these very properties, which alarm you for my
happiness, are the qualities which ensure it. Remember, Brenda, that
when your foot loved the calm smooth sea-beach of the summer sea, mine
ever delighted in the summit of the precipice, when the waves are in
fury."
"And it is even that which I dread," said Brenda; "it is even that
adventurous disposition which now is urging you to the brink of a
precipice more dangerous than ever was washed by a spring-tide. This
man,--do not frown, I will say no slander of him,--but is he not, even
in your own partial judgment, stern and overbearing? accustomed, as you
say, to command; but, for that very reason, commanding where he has no
right to do so, and leading whom it would most become him to follow?
rushing on danger, rather for its own sake, than for any other object?
And can you think of being yoked with a spirit so unsettled and stormy,
whose life has hitherto been led in scenes of death and peril, and who,
even while sitting by your side, cannot disguise his impatience again to
engage in them? A lover, methinks, should love his mistress better than
his own life; but yours, my dear Minna, loves her less than the pleasure
of inflicting death on others."
"And it is even for that I love him," said Minna. "I am a daughter of
the old dames of Norway, who could send their lovers to battle with a
smile, and slay them, with their own hands, if they returned with
dishonour. My lover must scorn the mockeries by which our degraded race
strive for distinction, or must practise them only in sport, and in
earnest of nobler dangers. No whale-striking, bird-nesting favourite for
me; my lover must be a Sea-king, or what else modern times may give that
draws near to that lofty character."
"Alas, my sister!" said Brenda, "it is now that I must in earnest begin
to believe the force of spells and of charms. You remember the Spanish
story which you took from me long since, because I said, in your
admiration of the chivalry of the olden times of Scandinavia, you
rivalled the extravagance of the hero.--Ah, Minna, your colour shows
that your conscience checks you, and reminds you of the book I mean;--is
it more wise, think you, to mistake a windmill for a giant, or the
commander of a paltry corsair for a Kiempe, or a Vi-king?"
Minna did indeed colour with anger at this insinuation, of which,
perhaps, she felt in some degree the truth.
"You have a right," she said, "to insult me, because you are possessed
of my secret."
Brenda's soft heart could not resist this charge of unkindness; she
adjured her sister to pardon her, and the natural gentleness of Minna's
feelings could not resist her entreaties.
"We are unhappy," she said, as she dried her sister's tears, "that we
cannot see with the same eyes--let us not make each other more so by
mutual insult and unkindness. You have my secret--it will not, perhaps,
long be one, for my father shall have the confidence to which he is
entitled, so soon as certain circumstances will permit me to offer it.
Meantime, I repeat, you have my secret, and I more than suspect that I
have yours in exchange, though you refuse to own it."
"How, Minna!" said Brenda; "would you have me acknowledge for any one
such feelings as you allude to, ere he has said the least word that
could justify such a confession?"
"Surely not; but a hidden fire may be distinguished by heat as well as
flame."
"You understand these signs, Minna," said Brenda, hanging down her head,
and in vain endeavouring to suppress the temptation to repartee which
her sister's remark offered; "but I can only say, that, if ever I love
at all, it shall not be until I have been asked to do so once or twice
at least, which has not yet chanced to me. But do not let us renew our
quarrel, and rather let us think why Norna should have told us that
horrible tale, and to what she expects it should lead."
"It must have been as a caution," replied Minna--"a caution which our
situation, and, I will not deny it, which mine in particular, might seem
to her to call for;--but I am alike strong in my own innocence, and in
the honour of Cleveland."
Brenda would fain have replied, that she did not confide so absolutely
in the latter security as in the first; but she was prudent, and,
forbearing to awaken the former painful discussion, only replied, "It is
strange that Norna should have said nothing more of her lover. Surely he
could not desert her in the extremity of misery to which he had reduced
her?"
"There may be agonies of distress," said Minna, after a pause, "in which
the mind is so much jarred, that it ceases to be responsive even to the
feelings which have most engrossed it;--her sorrow for her lover may
have been swallowed up in horror and despair."
"Or he might have fled from the islands, in fear of our father's
vengeance," replied Brenda.
"If for fear, or faintness of heart," said Minna, looking upwards, "he
was capable of flying from the ruin which he had occasioned, I trust he
has long ere this sustained the punishment which Heaven reserves for the
most base and dastardly of traitors and of cowards.--Come, sister, we
are ere this expected at the breakfast board."
And they went thither, arm in arm, with much more of confidence than had
lately subsisted between them; the little quarrel which had taken place
having served the purpose of a _bourasque_, or sudden squall, which
dispels mists and vapours, and leaves fair weather behind it.
On their way to the breakfast apartment, they agreed that it was
unnecessary, and might be imprudent, to communicate to their father the
circumstance of the nocturnal visit, or to let him observe that they now
knew more than formerly of the melancholy history of Norna.
AUTHOR'S NOTES.
Note I., p. 22.--NORSE FRAGMENTS.
Near the conclusion of Chapter II, it is noticed that the old Norwegian
sagas were preserved and often repeated by the fishermen of Orkney and
Zetland, while that language was not yet quite forgotten. Mr. Baikie of
Tankerness, a most respectable inhabitant of Kirkwall, and an Orkney
proprietor, assured me of the following curious fact.
A clergyman, who was not long deceased, remembered well when some
remnants of the Norse were still spoken in the island called North
Ronaldshaw. When Gray's Ode, entitled the "Fatal Sisters," was first
published, or at least first reached that remote island, the reverend
gentleman had the well-judged curiosity to read it to some of the old
persons of the isle, as a poem which regarded the history of their own
country. They listened with great attention to the preliminary
stanzas:--
"Now the storm begins to lour,