The Pirate
had formed them out of statuary-marble. The squall had passed 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 grass beneath, for there she knew she must have
contracted the fatal stain. But the rain, which had fallen there in
treble quantity, 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 grass, 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 glass 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 assume 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 assumed 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 God
that her own connexion with the Burgh-Westra family was by the lass'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 Derbyshire.
[13] The celebrated Sortes Virgilianæ 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.
To accomplish this purpose, while busied in preparing the table for Mr.
Mertoun's simple and solitary dinner-meal, she formally adorned the
table with two covers instead of one, and made all her other
preparations as if he was to have a guest or companion at dinner.
The artifice succeeded; for Mertoun, on coming from his study, no sooner
saw the table thus arranged, than he asked Swertha, who, waiting the
effect of her stratagem as a fisher watches his ground-baits, was
fiddling up and down the room, "Whether Mordaunt was returned from
Burgh-Westra?"
This question was the cue for Swertha, and she answered in a voice of
sorrowful anxiety, half real, half affected, "Na, na!--nae sic divot had
dunted at their door. It wad be blithe news indeed, to ken that young
Maister Mordaunt, puir dear bairn, were safe at hame."
"And if he be not at home, why should you lay a cover for him, you
doting fool?" replied Mertoun, in a tone well calculated to stop the old
woman's proceedings. But she replied, boldly, "that, indeed, somebody
should take thought about Maister Mordaunt; a' that she could do was to
have seat and plate ready for him when he came. But she thought the dear
bairn had been ower lang awa; and, if she maun speak out, she had her
ain fears when and whether he might ever come hame."
"_Your_ fears!" said Mertoun, his eyes flashing as they usually did when