Part 44 (2/2)
”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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d that her own connexion with the Burgh-Westra family was by the la.s.s'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 Derbys.h.i.+re.
[13] The celebrated Sortes Virgilianae 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.
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