The Pirate
against some steps of irregular ascent--"This should be the stair,
unless my memory greatly fail me; ay, and there she sits," he added,
pausing at a half-open door, "with all her tackle about her as usual,
and as busy, doubtless, as the devil in a gale of wind."
As he made this irreverent comparison, he entered, followed by his
daughters, the darkened apartment in which Norna was seated, amidst a
confused collection of books of various languages, parchment scrolls,
tablets and stones inscribed with the straight and angular characters of
the Runic alphabet, and similar articles, which the vulgar might have
connected with the exercise of the forbidden arts. There were also lying
in the chamber, or hung over the rude and ill-contrived chimney, an old
shirt of mail, with the headpiece, battle-axe, and lance, which had once
belonged to it; and on a shelf were disposed, in great order, several of
those curious stone-axes, formed of green granite, which are often found
in those islands, where they are called thunderbolts by the common
people, who usually preserve them as a charm of security against the
effects of lightning. There was, moreover, to be seen amid the strange
collection, a stone sacrificial knife, used perhaps for immolating human
victims, and one or two of the brazen implements called Celts, the
purpose of which has troubled the repose of so many antiquaries. A
variety of other articles, some of which had neither name nor were
capable of description, lay in confusion about the apartment; and in one
corner, on a quantity of withered sea-weed, reposed what seemed, at
first view, to be a large unshapely dog, but, when seen more closely,
proved to be a tame seal, which it had been Norna's amusement to
domesticate.
This uncouth favourite bristled up in its corner, upon the arrival of so
many strangers, with an alertness similar to that which a terrestrial
dog would have displayed on a similar occasion; but Norna remained
motionless, seated behind a table of rough granite, propped up by
misshapen feet of the same material, which, besides the old book with
which she seemed to be busied, sustained a cake of the coarse unleavened
bread, three parts oatmeal, and one the sawdust of fir, which is used by
the poor peasants of Norway, beside which stood a jar of water.
Magnus Troil remained a minute in silence gazing upon his kinswoman,
while the singularity of her mansion inspired Brenda with much fear, and
changed, though but for a moment, the melancholy and abstracted mood of
Minna, into a feeling of interest not unmixed with awe. The silence was
interrupted by the Udaller, who, unwilling on the one hand to give his
kinswoman offence, and desirous on the other to show that he was not
daunted by a reception so singular, opened the conversation thus:--
"I give you good e'en, cousin Norna--my daughters and I have come far to
see you."
Norna raised her eyes from her volume, looked full at her visitors, then
let them quietly sit down on the leaf with which she seemed to be
engaged.
"Nay, cousin," said Magnus, "take your own time--our business with you
can wait your leisure.--See here, Minna, what a fair prospect here is of
the cape, scarce a quarter of a mile off! you may see the billows
breaking on it topmast high. Our kinswoman has got a pretty seal,
too--Here, sealchie, my man, whew, whew!"
The seal took no further notice of the Udaller's advances to
acquaintance, than by uttering a low growl.
"He is not so well trained," continued the Udaller, affecting an air of
ease and unconcern, "as Peter MacRaw's, the old piper of Stornoway, who
had a seal that flapped its tail to the tune of _Caberfae_, and
acknowledged no other whatever.[20]--Well, cousin," he concluded,
observing that Norna closed her book, "are you going to give us a
welcome at last, or must we go farther than our blood-relation's house
to seek one, and that when the evening is wearing late apace?"
"Ye dull and hard-hearted generation, as deaf as the adder to the voice
of the charmer," answered Norna, addressing them, "why come ye to me?
You have slighted every warning I could give of the coming harm, and
now that it hath come upon you, ye seek my counsel when it can avail you
nothing."
"Look you, kinswoman," said the Udaller, with his usual frankness, and
boldness of manner and accent, "I must needs tell you that your courtesy
is something of the coarsest and the coldest. I cannot say that I ever
saw an adder, in regard there are none in these parts; but touching my
own thoughts of what such a thing may be, it cannot be termed a suitable
comparison to me or to my daughters, and that I would have you to know.
For old acquaintance, and certain other reasons, I do not leave your
house upon the instant; but as I came hither in all kindness and
civility, so I pray you to receive me with the like, otherwise we will
depart, and leave shame on your inhospitable threshold."
"How," said Norna, "dare you use such bold language in the house of one
from whom all men, from whom you yourself, come to solicit counsel and
aid? They who speak to the Reimkennar, must lower their voice to her
before whom winds and waves hush both blast and billow."
"Blast and billow may hush themselves if they will," replied the
peremptory Udaller, "but that will not I. I speak in the house of my
friend as in my own, and strike sail to none."
"And hope ye," said Norna, "by this rudeness to compel me to answer to
your interrogatories?"
"Kinswoman," replied Magnus Troil, "I know not so much as you of the old
Norse sagas; but this I know, that when kempies were wont, long since,
to seek the habitations of the gall-dragons and spae-women, they came
with their axes on their shoulders, and their good swords drawn in their
hands, and compelled the power whom they invoked to listen to and to
answer them, ay were it Odin himself."
"Kinsman," said Norna, arising from her seat, and coming forward, "thou
hast spoken well, and in good time for thyself and thy daughters; for
hadst thou turned from my threshold without extorting an answer,
morning's sun had never again shone upon you. The spirits who serve me
are jealous, and will not be employed in aught that may benefit
humanity, unless their service is commanded by the undaunted importunity
of the brave and the free. And now speak, what wouldst thou have of me?"
"My daughter's health," replied Magnus, "which no remedies have been
able to restore."
"Thy daughter's health?" answered Norna; "and what is the maiden's
ailment?"
"The physician," said Troil, "must name the disease. All that I can tell
thee of it is"----
"Be silent," said Norna, interrupting him, "I know all thou canst tell
me, and more than thou thyself knowest. Sit down, all of you--and thou,
maiden," she said, addressing Minna, "sit thou in that chair," pointing
to the place she had just left, "once the seat of Giervada, at whose
voice the stars hid their beams, and the moon herself grew pale."
Minna moved with slow and tremulous step towards the rude seat thus
indicated to her. It was composed of stone, formed into some semblance
of a chair by the rough and unskilful hand of some ancient Gothic
artist.
Brenda, creeping as close as possible to her father, seated herself
along with him upon a bench at some distance from Minna, and kept her
eyes, with a mixture of fear, pity, and anxiety, closely fixed upon
her. It would be difficult altogether to decipher the emotions by which
this amiable and affectionate girl was agitated at the moment. Deficient
in her sister's predominating quality of high imagination, and little
credulous, of course, to the marvellous, she could not but entertain
some vague and indefinite fears on her own account, concerning the
nature of the scene which was soon to take place. But these were in a
manner swallowed up in her apprehensions on the score of her sister,
who, with a frame so much weakened, spirits so much exhausted, and a
mind so susceptible of the impressions which all around her was
calculated to excite, now sat pensively resigned to the agency of one,
whose treatment might produce the most baneful effects upon such a
subject.
Brenda gazed at Minna, who sat in that rude chair of dark stone, her
finely formed shape and limbs making the strongest contrast with its
ponderous and irregular angles, her cheek and lips as pale as clay, and
her eyes turned upward, and lighted with the mixture of resignation and
excited enthusiasm, which belonged to her disease and her character. The
younger sister then looked on Norna, who muttered to herself in a low
monotonous manner, as, gliding from one place to another, she collected
different articles, which she placed one by one on the table. And
lastly, Brenda looked anxiously to her father, to gather, if possible,
from his countenance, whether he entertained any part of her own fears
for the consequences of the scene which was to ensue, considering the
state of Minna's health and spirits. But Magnus Troil seemed to have no
such apprehensions; he viewed with stern composure Norna's
preparations, and appeared to wait the event with the composure of one,
who, confiding in the skill of a medical artist, sees him preparing to
enter upon some important and painful operation, in the issue of which
he is interested by friendship or by affection.
Norna, meanwhile, went onward with her preparations, until she had
placed on the stone table a variety of miscellaneous articles, and among
the rest, a small chafing-dish full of charcoal, a crucible, and a piece
of thin sheet-lead. She then spoke aloud--"It is well that I was aware
of your coming hither--ay, long before you yourself had resolved it--how
should I else have been prepared for that which is now to be
done?--Maiden," she continued, addressing Minna, "where lies thy pain?"
The patient answered, by pressing her hand to the left side of her
bosom.
"Even so," replied Norna, "even so--'tis the site of weal or woe.--And
you, her father and her sister, think not this the idle speech of one
who talks by guess--if I can tell thee ill, it may be that I shall be
able to render that less severe, which may not, by any aid, be wholly
amended.--The heart--ay, the heart--touch that, and the eye grows dim,
the pulse fails, the wholesome stream of our blood is choked and
troubled, our limbs decay like sapless sea-weed in a summer's sun; our
better views of existence are past and gone; what remains is the dream
of lost happiness, or the fear of inevitable evil. But the Reimkennar
must to her work--well it is that I have prepared the means."
She threw off her long dark-coloured mantle, and stood before them in
her short jacket of light-blue wadmaal, with its skirt of the same
stuff, fancifully embroidered with black velvet, and bound at the waist
with a chain or girdle of silver, formed into singular devices. Norna
next undid the fillet which bound her grizzled hair, and shaking her
head wildly, caused it to fall in dishevelled abundance over her face
and around her shoulders, so as almost entirely to hide her features.
She then placed a small crucible on the chafing-dish already
mentioned,--dropped a few drops from a vial on the charcoal
below,--pointed towards it her wrinkled forefinger, which she had
previously moistened with liquid from another small bottle, and said
with a deep voice, "Fire, do thy duty;"--and the words were no sooner
spoken, than, probably by some chemical combination of which the
spectators were not aware, the charcoal which was under the crucible
became slowly ignited; while Norna, as if impatient of the delay, threw
hastily back her disordered tresses, and, while her features reflected
the sparkles and red light of the fire, and her eyes flashed from