Part 49 (1/2)
”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 coa.r.s.est 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 amongst her hair like those of a wild animal from its cover, blew fiercely till the whole was in an intense glow. She paused a moment from her toil, and muttering that the elemental spirit must be thanked, recited, in her usual monotonous, yet wild mode of chanting, the following verses:--
”Thou so needful, yet so dread, With cloudy crest, and wing of red; Thou, without whose genial breath The North would sleep the sleep of death; Who deign'st to warm the cottage hearth, Yet hurl'st proud palaces to earth,-- Brightest, keenest of the Powers, Which form and rule this world of ours, With my rhyme of Runic, I Thank thee for thy agency.”
She then severed a portion from the small ma.s.s of sheet-lead which lay upon the table, and, placing it in the crucible, subjected it to the action of the lighted charcoal, and, as it melted, she sung,--
”Old Reimkennar, to thy art Mother Hertha sends her part; She, whose gracious bounty gives Needful food for all that lives.
From the deep mine of the North, Came the mystic metal forth, Doom'd, amidst disjointed stones, Long to cere a champion's bones, Disinhumed my charms to aid-- Mother Earth, my thanks are paid.”
She then poured out some water from the jar into a large cup, or goblet, and sung once more, as she slowly stirred it round with the end of her staff:--
”Girdle of our islands dear, Element of Water, hear Thou whose power can overwhelm Broken mounds and ruin'd realm On the lowly Belgian strand; All thy fiercest rage can never Of our soil a furlong sever From our rock-defended land; Play then gently thou thy part, To a.s.sist old Norna's art.”
She then, with a pair of pincers, removed the crucible from the chafing-dish, and poured the lead, now entirely melted, into the bowl of water, repeating at the same time,--
”Elements, each other greeting, Gifts and powers attend your meeting!”