The Pirate
astonish the author's boyhood with tales of those haunted islets. On one
of them, called, I believe, Coffin-key, the seamen positively refused to
pass the night, and came off every evening while they were engaged in
completing the watering of the vessel, returning the following sunrise.
CHAPTER III.
There was shaking of hands, and sorrow of heart,
For the hour was approaching when merry folks must part;
So we call'd for our horses, and ask'd for our way,
While the jolly old landlord said, "Nothing's to pay."
_Lilliput, a Poem._
We do not dwell upon the festivities of the day, which had nothing in
them to interest the reader particularly. The table groaned under the
usual plenty, which was disposed of by the guests with the usual
appetite--the bowl of punch was filled and emptied with the same
celerity as usual--the men quaffed, and the women laughed--Claud Halcro
rhymed, punned, and praised John Dryden--the Udaller bumpered and sung
choruses--and the evening concluded, as usual, in the Rigging-loft, as
it was Magnus Troil's pleasure to term the dancing apartment.
It was then and there that Cleveland, approaching Magnus, where he sat
betwixt his two daughters, intimated his intention of going to Kirkwall
in a small brig, which Bryce Snailsfoot, who had disposed of his goods
with unprecedented celerity, had freighted thither, to procure a supply.
Magnus heard the sudden proposal of his guest with surprise, not
unmingled with displeasure, and demanded sharply of Cleveland, how long
it was since he had learned to prefer Bryce Snailsfoot's company to his
own? Cleveland answered, with his usual bluntness of manner, that time
and tide tarried for no one, and that he had his own particular reasons
for making his trip to Kirkwall sooner than the Udaller proposed to set
sail--that he hoped to meet with him and his daughters at the great fair
which was now closely approaching, and might perhaps find it possible to
return to Zetland along with them.
While he spoke this, Brenda kept her eye as much upon her sister as it
was possible to do, without exciting general observation. She remarked,
that Minna's pale cheek became yet paler while Cleveland spoke, and that
she seemed, by compressing her lips, and slightly knitting her brows, to
be in the act of repressing the effects of strong interior emotion. But
she spoke not; and when Cleveland, having bidden adieu to the Udaller,
approached to salute her, as was then the custom, she received his
farewell without trusting herself to attempt a reply.
Brenda had her own trial approaching; for Mordaunt Mertoun, once so much
loved by her father, was now in the act of making his cold parting from
him, without receiving a single look of friendly regard. There was,
indeed, sarcasm in the tone with which Magnus wished the youth a good
journey, and recommended to him, if he met a bonny lass by the way, not
to dream that she was in love, because she chanced to jest with him.
Mertoun coloured at what he felt as an insult, though it was but half
intelligible to him; but he remembered Brenda, and suppressed every
feeling of resentment. He proceeded to take his leave of the sisters.
Minna, whose heart was considerably softened towards him, received his
farewell with some degree of interest; but Brenda's grief was so visible
in the kindness of her manner, and the moisture which gathered in her
eye, that it was noticed even by the Udaller, who exclaimed, half
angrily, "Why, ay, lass, that may be right enough, for he was an old
acquaintance; but mind! I have no will that he remain one."
Mertoun, who was slowly leaving the apartment, half overheard this
disparaging observation, and half turned round to resent it. But his
purpose failed him when he saw that Brenda had been obliged to have
recourse to her handkerchief to hide her emotion, and the sense that it
was excited by his departure, obliterated every thought of her father's
unkindness. He retired--the other guests followed his example; and many
of them, like Cleveland and himself, took their leave over-night, with
the intention of commencing their homeward journey on the succeeding
morning.
That night, the mutual sorrow of Minna and Brenda, if it could not
wholly remove the reserve which had estranged the sisters from each
other, at least melted all its frozen and unkindly symptoms. They wept
in each other's arms; and though neither spoke, yet each became dearer
to the other; because they felt that the grief which called forth these
drops, had a source common to them both.
It is probable, that though Brenda's tears were most abundant, the grief
of Minna was most deeply seated; for, long after the younger had sobbed
herself asleep, like a child, upon her sister's bosom, Minna lay awake,
watching the dubious twilight, while tear after tear slowly gathered in
her eye, and found a current down her cheek, as soon as it became too
heavy to be supported by her long black silken eyelashes. As she lay,
bewildered among the sorrowful thoughts which supplied these tears, she
was surprised to distinguish, beneath the window, the sounds of music.
At first she supposed it was some freak of Claud Halcro, whose fantastic
humour sometimes indulged itself in such serenades. But it was not the
_gue_ of the old minstrel, but the guitar, that she heard; an instrument
which none in the island knew how to touch except Cleveland, who had
learned, in his intercourse with the South-American Spaniards, to play
on it with superior execution. Perhaps it was in those climates also
that he had learned the song, which, though he now sung it under the
window of a maiden of Thule, had certainly never been composed for the
native of a climate so northerly and so severe, since it spoke of
productions of the earth and skies which are there unknown.
1.
"Love wakes and weeps
While Beauty sleeps:
O for Music's softest numbers,
To prompt a theme,
For Beauty's dream,
Soft as the pillow of her slumbers!
2.
"Through groves of palm
Sigh gales of balm,
Fire-flies on the air are wheeling;
While through the gloom
Comes soft perfume,
The distant beds of flowers revealing.
3.
"O wake and live,
No dream can give
A shadow'd bliss, the real excelling;
No longer sleep,
From lattice peep,
And list the tale that Love is telling!"
The voice of Cleveland was deep, rich, and manly, and accorded well with
the Spanish air, to which the words, probably a translation from the
same language, had been adapted. His invocation would not probably have
been fruitless, could Minna have arisen without awaking her sister. But
that was impossible; for Brenda, who, as we have already mentioned, had
wept bitterly before she had sunk into repose, now lay with her face on
her sister's neck, and one arm stretched around her, in the attitude of
a child which has cried itself asleep in the arms of its nurse. It was
impossible for Minna to extricate herself from her grasp without awaking
her; and she could not, therefore, execute her hasty purpose, of donning
her gown, and approaching the window to speak with Cleveland, who, she
had no doubt, had resorted to this contrivance to procure an interview.
The restraint was sufficiently provoking, for it was more than probable
that her lover came to take his last farewell; but that Brenda, inimical
as she seemed to be of late towards Cleveland, should awake and witness
it, was a thought not to be endured.
There was a short pause, in which Minna endeavoured more than once, with
as much gentleness as possible, to unclasp Brenda's arm from her neck;
but whenever she attempted it, the slumberer muttered some little
pettish sound, like a child disturbed in its sleep, which sufficiently
showed that perseverance in the attempt would awaken her fully.
To her great vexation, therefore, Minna was compelled to remain still
and silent; when her lover, as if determined upon gaining her ear by
music of another strain, sung the following fragment of a sea-ditty:--
"Farewell! Farewell! the voice you hear,
Has left its last soft tone with you,--
Its next must join the seaward cheer,
And shout among the shouting crew.
"The accents which I scarce could form
Beneath your frown's controlling check,
Must give the word, above the storm,
To cut the mast, and clear the wreck.
"The timid eye I dared not raise,--
The hand that shook when press'd to thine,
Must point the guns upon the chase,--
Must bid the deadly cutlass shine.
"To all I love, or hope, or fear,--
Honour, or own, a long adieu!
To all that life has soft and dear,
Farewell! save memory of you!"[12](_c_)
He was again silent; and again she, to whom the serenade was addressed,
strove in vain to arise without rousing her sister. It was impossible;
and she had nothing before her but the unhappy thought that Cleveland
was taking leave in his desolation, without a single glance, or a single
word. He, too, whose temper was so fiery, yet who subjected his violent
mood with such sedulous attention to her will--could she but have stolen
a moment to say adieu--to caution him against new quarrels with
Mertoun--to implore him to detach himself from such comrades as he had
described--could she but have done this, who could say what effect such
parting admonitions might have had upon his character--nay, upon the
future events of his life?
Tantalized by such thoughts, Minna was about to make another and
decisive effort, when she heard voices beneath the window, and thought
she could distinguish that they were those of Cleveland and Mertoun,
speaking in a sharp tone, which, at the same time, seemed cautiously
suppressed, as if the speakers feared being overheard. Alarm now mingled
with her former desire to rise from bed, and she accomplished at once
the purpose which she had so often attempted in vain. Brenda's arm was
unloosed from her sister's neck, without the sleeper receiving more
alarm than provoked two or three unintelligible murmurs; while, with
equal speed and silence, Minna put on some part of her dress, with the
intention to steal to the window. But, ere she could accomplish this,
the sound of the voices without was exchanged for that of blows and
struggling, which terminated suddenly by a deep groan.
Terrified at this last signal of mischief, Minna sprung to the window,
and endeavoured to open it, for the persons were so close under the
walls of the house that she could not see them, save by putting her head
out of the casement. The iron hasp was stiff and rusted, and, as
generally happens, the haste with which she laboured to undo it only
rendered the task more difficult. When it was accomplished, and Minna
had eagerly thrust her body half out at the casement, those who had
created the sounds which alarmed her were become invisible, excepting
that she saw a shadow cross the moonlight, the substance of which must
have been in the act of turning a corner, which concealed it from her
sight. The shadow moved slowly, and seemed that of a man who supported
another upon his shoulders; an indication which put the climax to
Minna's agony of mind. The window was not above eight feet from the
ground, and she hesitated not to throw herself from it hastily, and to
pursue the object which had excited her terror.
But when she came to the corner of the buildings from which the shadow
seemed to have been projected, she discovered nothing which could point
out the way that the figure had gone; and, after a moment's
consideration, became sensible that all attempts at pursuit would be
alike wild and fruitless. Besides all the projections and recesses of