So saying, the portly though weatherbeaten hulk of the Udaller sailed off like a man-of-war that had braved a hundred gales, having his guest in tow like a recent prize. The greater part of the revellers followed their leader with loud jubilee, although there were several stanch topers, who, taking the option left them by the Udaller, remained behind to relieve the Jolly Mariner of a fresh cargo, amidst many a pledge to the health of their absent landlord, and to the prosperity of his roof-tree, with whatsoever other wishes of kindness could be devised, as an apology for another pint-b.u.mper of n.o.ble punch.
The rest soon thronged the dancing-room, an apartment which partook of the simplicity of the time and of the country. Drawing-rooms and saloons were then unknown in Scotland, save in the houses of the n.o.bility, and of course absolutely so in Zetland; but a long, low, anomalous store-room, sometimes used for the depositation of merchandise, sometimes for putting aside lumber, and a thousand other purposes, was well known to all the youth of Dunrossness, and of many a district besides, as the scene of the merry dance, which was sustained with so much glee when Magnus Troil gave his frequent feasts.
The first appearance of this ball-room might have shocked a fashionable party, a.s.sembled for the quadrille or the waltz. Low as we have stated the apartment to be, it was but imperfectly illuminated by lamps, candles, ship-lanterns, and a variety of other _candelabra_, which served to throw a dusky light upon the floor, and upon the heaps of merchandise and miscellaneous articles which were piled around; some of them stores for the winter; some, goods destined for exportation; some, the tribute of Neptune, paid at the expense of shipwrecked vessels, whose owners were unknown; some, articles of barter received by the proprietor, who, like most others at the period, was somewhat of a merchant as well as a landholder, in exchange for the fish, and other articles, the produce of his estate. All these, with the chests, boxes, casks, &c., which contained them, had been drawn aside, and piled one above the other, in order to give room for the dancers, who, light and lively as if they had occupied the most splendid saloon in the parish of St. James"s, executed their national dances with equal grace and activity.
The group of old men who looked on, bore no inconsiderable resemblance to a party of aged tritons, engaged in beholding the sports of the sea-nymphs; so hard a look had most of them acquired by contending with the elements, and so much did the s.h.a.ggy hair and beards, which many of them cultivated after the ancient Norwegian fashion, give their heads the character of these supposed natives of the deep. The young people, on the other hand, were uncommonly handsome, tall, well-made, and shapely; the men with long fair hair, and, until broken by the weather, a fresh ruddy complexion, which, in the females, was softened into a bloom of infinite delicacy. Their natural good ear for music qualified them to second to the utmost the exertions of a band, whose strains were by no means contemptible; while the elders, who stood around or sat quiet upon the old sea-chests, which served for chairs, criticised the dancers, as they compared their execution with their own exertions in former days; or, warmed by the cup and flagon, which continued to circulate among them, snapped their fingers, and beat time with their feet to the music.
Mordaunt looked upon this scene of universal mirth with the painful recollection, that he, thrust aside from his pre-eminence, no longer exercised the important duties of chief of the dancers, or office of leader of the revels, which had been a.s.signed to the stranger Cleveland.
Anxious, however, to suppress the feelings of his own disappointment, which he felt it was neither wise to entertain nor manly to display, he approached his fair neighbours, to whom he had been so acceptable at table, with the purpose of inviting one of them to become his partner in the dance. But the awfully ancient old lady, even the Lady Glowrowrum, who had only tolerated the exuberance of her nieces" mirth during the time of dinner, because her situation rendered it then impossible for her to interfere, was not disposed to permit the apprehended renewal of the intimacy implied in Mertoun"s invitation. She therefore took upon herself, in the name of her two nieces, who sat pouting beside her in displeased silence, to inform Mordaunt, after thanking him for his civility, that the hands of her nieces were engaged for that evening; and, as he continued to watch the party at a little distance, he had an opportunity of being convinced that the alleged engagement was a mere apology to get rid of him, when he saw the two good-humoured sisters join the dance, under the auspices of the next young men who asked their hands. Incensed at so marked a slight, and unwilling to expose himself to another, Mordaunt Mertoun drew back from the circle of dancers, shrouded himself amongst the ma.s.s of inferior persons who crowded into the bottom of the room as spectators, and there, concealed from the observation of others, digested his own mortification as well as he could--that is to say, very ill--and with all the philosophy of his age--that is to say, with none at all.
CHAPTER XV.
A torch for me--let wantons, light of heart, Tickle the useless rushes with their heels: For I am proverb"d with a grandsire phrase-- I"ll be a candle-holder, and look on.
_Romeo and Juliet._
The youth, says the moralist Johnson, cares not for the boy"s hobbyhorse, nor the man for the youth"s mistress; and therefore the distress of Mordaunt Mertoun, when excluded from the merry dance, may seem trifling to many of my readers, who would, nevertheless, think they did well to be angry if deposed from their usual place in an a.s.sembly of a different kind. There lacked not amus.e.m.e.nt, however, for those whom the dance did not suit, or who were not happy enough to find partners to their liking. Halcro, now completely in his element, had a.s.sembled round him an audience, to whom he was declaiming his poetry with all the enthusiasm of glorious John himself, and receiving in return the usual degree of applause allowed to minstrels who recite their own rhymes--so long at least as the author is within hearing of the criticism. Halcro"s poetry might indeed have interested the antiquary as well as the admirer of the Muses, for several of his pieces were translations or imitations from the Scaldic sagas, which continued to be sung by the fishermen of those islands even until a very late period; insomuch, that when Gray"s poems first found their way to Orkney, the old people recognised at once, in the ode of the "Fatal Sisters," the Runic rhymes which had amused or terrified their infancy under the t.i.tle of the "Magicians,"
and which the fishers of North Ronaldshaw, and other remote isles, used still to sing when asked for a Norse ditty.[41]
Half listening, half lost in his own reflections, Mordaunt Mertoun stood near the door of the apartment, and in the outer ring of the little circle formed around old Halcro, while the bard chanted to a low, wild, monotonous air, varied only by the efforts of the singer to give interest and emphasis to particular pa.s.sages, the following imitation of a Northern war-song:
THE SONG OF HAROLD HARf.a.gER.
The sun is rising dimly red, The wind is wailing low and dread; From his cliff the eagle sallies, Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys; In the midst the ravens hover, Peep the wild-dogs from the cover, Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling, Each in his wild accents telling, "Soon we feast on dead and dying, Fair-hair"d Harold"s flag is flying."
Many a crest in air is streaming, Many a helmet darkly gleaming, Many an arm the axe uprears, Doom"d to hew the wood of spears.
All along the crowded ranks, Horses neigh and armour clanks; Chiefs are shouting, clarions ringing, Louder still the bard is singing, "Gather, footmen,--gather, hors.e.m.e.n, To the field, ye valiant Nors.e.m.e.n!
"Halt ye not for food or slumber, View not vantage, count not number; Jolly reapers, forward still; Grow the crop on vale or hill, Thick or scatter"d, stiff or lithe, It shall down before the scythe.
Forward with your sickles bright, Reap the harvest of the fight-- Onward, footmen,--onward, hors.e.m.e.n, To the charge, ye gallant Nors.e.m.e.n!
"Fatal Choosers of the Slaughter, O"er you hovers Odin"s daughter; Hear the voice she spreads before ye,-- Victory, and wealth, and glory; Or old Valhalla"s roaring hail, Her ever-circling mead and ale, Where for eternity unite The joys of wa.s.sail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and hors.e.m.e.n, Charge and fight, and die like Nors.e.m.e.n!"
"The poor unhappy blinded heathens!" said Triptolemus, with a sigh deep enough for a groan; "they speak of their eternal cups of ale, and I question if they kend how to manage a croft land of grain!"
"The cleverer fellows they, neighbour Yellowley," answered the poet, "if they made ale without barley."
"Barley!--alack-a-day!" replied the more accurate agriculturist, "who ever heard of barley in these parts? Bear, my dearest friend, bear is all they have, and wonderment it is to me that they ever see an awn of it. Ye scart the land with a bit thing ye ca" a pleugh--ye might as weel give it a ritt with the teeth of a redding-kame. O, to see the sock, and the heel, and the sole-clout of a real steady Scottish pleugh, with a chield like a Samson between the stilts, laying a weight on them would keep down a mountain; twa stately owsen, and as many broad-breasted horse in the traces, going through soil and till, and leaving a fur in the ground would carry off water like a causeyed syver! They that have seen a sight like that, have seen something to crack about in another sort, than those unhappy auld-warld stories of war and slaughter, of which the land has seen even but too mickle, for a" your singing and soughing awa in praise of such bloodthirsty doings, Master Claud Halcro."
"It is a heresy," said the animated little poet, bridling and drawing himself up, as if the whole defence of the Orcadian Archipelago rested on his single arm--"It is a heresy so much as to name one"s native country, if a man is not prepared when and how to defend himself--ay, and to annoy another. The time has been, that if we made not good ale and aquavitae, we knew well enough where to find that which was ready made to our hand; but now the descendants of Sea-kings, and Champions, and Berserkars, are become as incapable of using their swords, as if they were so many women. Ye may praise them for a strong pull on an oar, or a sure foot on a skerry; but what else could glorious John himself say of ye, my good Hialtlanders, that any man would listen to?"
"Spoken like an angel, most n.o.ble poet," said Cleveland, who, during an interval of the dance, stood near the party in which this conversation was held. "The old champions you talked to us about yesternight, were the men to make a harp ring--gallant fellows, that were friends to the sea, and enemies to all that sailed on it. Their ships, I suppose, were clumsy enough; but if it is true that they went upon the account as far as the Levant, I scarce believe that ever better fellows unloosed a topsail."
"Ay," replied Halcro, "there you spoke them right. In those days none could call their life and means of living their own, unless they dwelt twenty miles out of sight of the blue sea. Why, they had public prayers put up in every church in Europe, for deliverance from the ire of the Northmen. In France and England, ay, and in Scotland too, for as high as they hold their head now-a-days, there was not a bay or a haven, but it was freer to our forefathers than to the poor devils of natives; and now we cannot, forsooth, so much as grow our own barley without Scottish help"--(here he darted a sarcastic glance at the factor)--"I would I saw the time we were to measure arms with them again!"
"Spoken like a hero once more," said Cleveland.
"Ah!" continued the little bard, "I would it were possible to see our barks, once the water-dragons of the world, swimming with the black raven standard waving at the topmast, and their decks glimmering with arms, instead of being heaped up with stockfish--winning with our fearless hands what the n.i.g.g.ard soil denies--paying back all old scorn and modern injury--reaping where we never sowed, and felling what we never planted--living and laughing through the world, and smiling when we were summoned to quit it!"
So spoke Claud Halcro, in no serious, or at least most certainly in no sober mood, his brain (never the most stable) whizzing under the influence of fifty well-remembered sagas, besides five b.u.mpers of usquebaugh and brandy; and Cleveland, between jest and earnest, clapped him on the shoulder, and again repeated, "Spoken like a hero!"
"Spoken like a fool, I think," said Magnus Troil, whose attention had been also attracted by the vehemence of the little bard--"where would you cruize upon, or against whom?--we are all subjects of one realm, I trow, and I would have you to remember, that your voyage may bring up at Execution-dock.--I like not the Scots--no offence, Mr. Yellowley--that is, I would like them well enough if they would stay quiet in their own land, and leave us at peace with our own people, and manners, and fashions; and if they would but abide there till I went to harry them like a mad old Berserkar, I would leave them in peace till the day of judgment. With what the sea sends us, and the land lends us, as the proverb says, and a set of honest neighbourly folks to help us to consume it, so help me, Saint Magnus, as I think we are even but too happy!"
"I know what war is," said an old man, "and I would as soon sail through Sumburgh-roost in a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l, or in a worse loom, as I would venture there again."
"And, pray, what wars knew your valour?" said Halcro, who, though forbearing to contradict his landlord from a sense of respect, was not a whit inclined to abandon his argument to any meaner authority.
"I was pressed," answered the old Triton, "to serve under Montrose, when he came here about the sixteen hundred and fifty-one, and carried a sort of us off, will ye nill ye, to get our throats cut in the wilds of Strathnavern[42](_k_)--I shall never forget it--we had been hard put to it for victuals--what would I have given for a luncheon of Burgh-Westra beef--ay, or a mess of sour sillocks?--When our Highlandmen brought in a dainty drove of kyloes, much ceremony there was not, for we shot and felled, and flayed, and roasted, and broiled, as it came to every man"s hand; till, just as our beards were at the greasiest, we heard--G.o.d preserve us--a tramp of horse, then twa or three drapping shots,--then came a full salvo,--and then, when the officers were crying on us to stand, and maist of us looking which way we might run away, down they broke, horse and foot, with old John Urry, or Hurry,[43] or whatever they called him--he hurried us that day, and worried us to boot--and we began to fall as thick as the stots that we were felling five minutes before."
"And Montrose," said the soft voice of the graceful Minna; "what became of Montrose, or how looked he?"
"Like a lion with the hunters before him," answered the old gentleman; "but I looked not twice his way, for my own lay right over the hill."
"And so you left him?" said Minna, in a tone of the deepest contempt.
"It was no fault of mine, Mistress Minna," answered the old man, somewhat out of countenance; "but I was there with no choice of my own; and, besides, what good could I have done?--all the rest were running like sheep, and why should I have staid?"
"You might have died with him," said Minna.
"And lived with him to all eternity, in immortal verse!" added Claud Halcro.
"I thank you, Mistress Minna," replied the plain-dealing Zetlander; "and I thank you, my old friend Claud;--but I would rather drink both your healths in this good bicker of ale, like a living man as I am, than that you should be making songs in my honour, for having died forty or fifty years agone. But what signified it,--run or fight, "twas all one;--they took Montrose, poor fellow, for all his doughty deeds, and they took me that did no doughty deeds at all; and they hanged him, poor man, and as for me"----
"I trust in Heaven they flogged and pickled you," said Cleveland, worn out of patience with the dull narrative of the peaceful Zetlander"s poltroonery, of which he seemed so wondrous little ashamed.
"Flog horses, and pickle beef," said Magnus; "Why, you have not the vanity to think, that, with all your quarterdeck airs, you will make poor old neighbour Haagen ashamed that he was not killed some scores of years since? You have looked on death yourself, my doughty young friend, but it was with the eyes of a young man who wishes to be thought of; but we are a peaceful people,--peaceful, that is, as long as any one should be peaceful, and that is till some one has the impudence to wrong us, or our neighbours; and then, perhaps, they may not find our northern blood much cooler in our veins than was that of the old Scandinavians that gave us our names and lineage.--Get ye along, get ye along to the sword-dance,[44] that the strangers that are amongst us may see that our hands and our weapons are not altogether unacquainted even yet."
A dozen cutla.s.ses, selected hastily from an old arm-chest, and whose rusted hue bespoke how seldom they left the sheath, armed the same number of young Zetlanders, with whom mingled six maidens, led by Minna Troil; and the minstrelsy instantly commenced a tune appropriate to the ancient Norwegian war-dance, the evolutions of which are perhaps still practised in those remote islands.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The first movement was graceful and majestic, the youths holding their swords erect, and without much gesture; but the tune, and the corresponding motions of the dancers, became gradually more and more rapid,--they clashed their swords together, in measured time, with a spirit which gave the exercise a dangerous appearance in the eye of the spectator, though the firmness, justice, and accuracy, with which the dancers kept time with the stroke of their weapons, did, in truth, ensure its safety. The most singular part of the exhibition was the courage exhibited by the female performers, who now, surrounded by the swordsmen, seemed like the Sabine maidens in the hands of their Roman lovers; now, moving under the arch of steel which the young men had formed, by crossing their weapons over the heads of their fair partners, resembled the band of Amazons when they first joined in the Pyrrhic dance with the followers of Theseus. But by far the most striking and appropriate figure was that of Minna Troil, whom Halcro had long since ent.i.tled the Queen of Swords, and who, indeed, moved amidst the swordsmen with an air, which seemed to hold all the drawn blades as the proper accompaniments of her person, and the implements of her pleasure.
And when the mazes of the dance became more intricate, when the close and continuous clash of the weapons made some of her companions shrink, and show signs of fear, her cheek, her lip, and her eye, seemed rather to announce, that, at the moment when the weapons flashed fastest, and rung sharpest around her, she was most completely self-possessed, and in her own element. Last of all, when the music had ceased, and she remained for an instant upon the floor by herself, as the rule of the dance required, the swordsmen and maidens, who departed from around her, seemed the guards and the train of some princess, who, dismissed by her signal, were leaving her for a time to solitude. Her own look and att.i.tude, wrapped, as she probably was, in some vision of the imagination, corresponded admirably with the ideal dignity which the spectators ascribed to her; but, almost immediately recollecting herself, she blushed, as if conscious she had been, though but for an instant, the object of undivided attention, and gave her hand gracefully to Cleveland, who, though he had not joined in the dance, a.s.sumed the duty of conducting her to her seat.
As they pa.s.sed, Mordaunt Mertoun might observe that Cleveland whispered into Minna"s ear, and that her brief reply was accompanied with even more discomposure of countenance than she had manifested when encountering the gaze of the whole a.s.sembly. Mordaunt"s suspicions were strongly awakened by what he observed, for he knew Minna"s character well, and with what equanimity and indifference she was in the custom of receiving the usual compliments and gallantries with which her beauty and her situation rendered her sufficiently familiar.
"Can it be possible she really loves this stranger?" was the unpleasant thought that instantly shot across Mordaunt"s mind;--"And if she does, what is my interest in the matter?" was the second; and which was quickly followed by the reflection, that though he claimed no interest at any time but as a friend, and though that interest was now withdrawn, he was still, in consideration of their former intimacy, ent.i.tled both to be sorry and angry at her for throwing away her affections on one he judged unworthy of her. In this process of reasoning, it is probable that a little mortified vanity, or some indescribable shade of selfish regret, might be endeavouring to a.s.sume the disguise of disinterested generosity; but there is so much of base alloy in our very best (una.s.sisted) thoughts, that it is melancholy work to criticise too closely the motives of our most worthy actions; at least we would recommend to every one to let those of his neighbours pa.s.s current, however narrowly he may examine the purity of his own.
The sword-dance was succeeded by various other specimens of the same exercise, and by songs, to which the singers lent their whole soul, while the audience were sure, as occasion offered, to unite in some favourite chorus. It is upon such occasions that music, though of a simple and even rude character, finds its natural empire over the generous bosom, and produces that strong excitement which cannot be attained by the most learned compositions of the first masters, which are caviare to the common ear, although, doubtless, they afford a delight, exquisite in its kind, to those whose natural capacity and education have enabled them to comprehend and relish those difficult and complicated combinations of harmony.
It was about midnight when a knocking at the door of the mansion, with the sound of the _Gue_ and the _Langspiel_, announced, by their tinkling chime, the arrival of fresh revellers, to whom, according to the hospitable custom of the country, the apartments were instantly thrown open.