Part 44 (1/2)
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.