[10] To _maroon_ a seaman, signified to abandon him on a desolate coast or island--a piece of cruelty often practised by Pirates and Buccaniers.
[11] An elder brother, now no more, who was educated in the navy, and had been a midshipman in Rodney"s squadron in the West Indies, used to astonish the author"s boyhood with tales of those haunted islets. On one of them, called, I believe, Coffin-key, the seamen positively refused to pa.s.s the night, and came off every evening while they were engaged in completing the watering of the vessel, returning the following sunrise.
CHAPTER III.
There was shaking of hands, and sorrow of heart, For the hour was approaching when merry folks must part; So we call"d for our horses, and ask"d for our way, While the jolly old landlord said, "Nothing"s to pay."
_Lilliput, a Poem._
We do not dwell upon the festivities of the day, which had nothing in them to interest the reader particularly. The table groaned under the usual plenty, which was disposed of by the guests with the usual appet.i.te--the bowl of punch was filled and emptied with the same celerity as usual--the men quaffed, and the women laughed--Claud Halcro rhymed, punned, and praised John Dryden--the Udaller b.u.mpered and sung choruses--and the evening concluded, as usual, in the Rigging-loft, as it was Magnus Troil"s pleasure to term the dancing apartment.
It was then and there that Cleveland, approaching Magnus, where he sat betwixt his two daughters, intimated his intention of going to Kirkwall in a small brig, which Bryce Snailsfoot, who had disposed of his goods with unprecedented celerity, had freighted thither, to procure a supply.
Magnus heard the sudden proposal of his guest with surprise, not unmingled with displeasure, and demanded sharply of Cleveland, how long it was since he had learned to prefer Bryce Snailsfoot"s company to his own? Cleveland answered, with his usual bluntness of manner, that time and tide tarried for no one, and that he had his own particular reasons for making his trip to Kirkwall sooner than the Udaller proposed to set sail--that he hoped to meet with him and his daughters at the great fair which was now closely approaching, and might perhaps find it possible to return to Zetland along with them.
While he spoke this, Brenda kept her eye as much upon her sister as it was possible to do, without exciting general observation. She remarked, that Minna"s pale cheek became yet paler while Cleveland spoke, and that she seemed, by compressing her lips, and slightly knitting her brows, to be in the act of repressing the effects of strong interior emotion. But she spoke not; and when Cleveland, having bidden adieu to the Udaller, approached to salute her, as was then the custom, she received his farewell without trusting herself to attempt a reply.
Brenda had her own trial approaching; for Mordaunt Mertoun, once so much loved by her father, was now in the act of making his cold parting from him, without receiving a single look of friendly regard. There was, indeed, sarcasm in the tone with which Magnus wished the youth a good journey, and recommended to him, if he met a bonny la.s.s by the way, not to dream that she was in love, because she chanced to jest with him.
Mertoun coloured at what he felt as an insult, though it was but half intelligible to him; but he remembered Brenda, and suppressed every feeling of resentment. He proceeded to take his leave of the sisters.
Minna, whose heart was considerably softened towards him, received his farewell with some degree of interest; but Brenda"s grief was so visible in the kindness of her manner, and the moisture which gathered in her eye, that it was noticed even by the Udaller, who exclaimed, half angrily, "Why, ay, la.s.s, that may be right enough, for he was an old acquaintance; but mind! I have no will that he remain one."
Mertoun, who was slowly leaving the apartment, half overheard this disparaging observation, and half turned round to resent it. But his purpose failed him when he saw that Brenda had been obliged to have recourse to her handkerchief to hide her emotion, and the sense that it was excited by his departure, obliterated every thought of her father"s unkindness. He retired--the other guests followed his example; and many of them, like Cleveland and himself, took their leave over-night, with the intention of commencing their homeward journey on the succeeding morning.
That night, the mutual sorrow of Minna and Brenda, if it could not wholly remove the reserve which had estranged the sisters from each other, at least melted all its frozen and unkindly symptoms. They wept in each other"s arms; and though neither spoke, yet each became dearer to the other; because they felt that the grief which called forth these drops, had a source common to them both.
It is probable, that though Brenda"s tears were most abundant, the grief of Minna was most deeply seated; for, long after the younger had sobbed herself asleep, like a child, upon her sister"s bosom, Minna lay awake, watching the dubious twilight, while tear after tear slowly gathered in her eye, and found a current down her cheek, as soon as it became too heavy to be supported by her long black silken eyelashes. As she lay, bewildered among the sorrowful thoughts which supplied these tears, she was surprised to distinguish, beneath the window, the sounds of music.
At first she supposed it was some freak of Claud Halcro, whose fantastic humour sometimes indulged itself in such serenades. But it was not the _gue_ of the old minstrel, but the guitar, that she heard; an instrument which none in the island knew how to touch except Cleveland, who had learned, in his intercourse with the South-American Spaniards, to play on it with superior execution. Perhaps it was in those climates also that he had learned the song, which, though he now sung it under the window of a maiden of Thule, had certainly never been composed for the native of a climate so northerly and so severe, since it spoke of productions of the earth and skies which are there unknown.
1.
"Love wakes and weeps While Beauty sleeps: O for Music"s softest numbers, To prompt a theme, For Beauty"s dream, Soft as the pillow of her slumbers!
2.
"Through groves of palm Sigh gales of balm, Fire-flies on the air are wheeling; While through the gloom Comes soft perfume, The distant beds of flowers revealing.
3.
"O wake and live, No dream can give A shadow"d bliss, the real excelling; No longer sleep, From lattice peep, And list the tale that Love is telling!"
The voice of Cleveland was deep, rich, and manly, and accorded well with the Spanish air, to which the words, probably a translation from the same language, had been adapted. His invocation would not probably have been fruitless, could Minna have arisen without awaking her sister. But that was impossible; for Brenda, who, as we have already mentioned, had wept bitterly before she had sunk into repose, now lay with her face on her sister"s neck, and one arm stretched around her, in the att.i.tude of a child which has cried itself asleep in the arms of its nurse. It was impossible for Minna to extricate herself from her grasp without awaking her; and she could not, therefore, execute her hasty purpose, of donning her gown, and approaching the window to speak with Cleveland, who, she had no doubt, had resorted to this contrivance to procure an interview.
The restraint was sufficiently provoking, for it was more than probable that her lover came to take his last farewell; but that Brenda, inimical as she seemed to be of late towards Cleveland, should awake and witness it, was a thought not to be endured.
There was a short pause, in which Minna endeavoured more than once, with as much gentleness as possible, to unclasp Brenda"s arm from her neck; but whenever she attempted it, the slumberer muttered some little pettish sound, like a child disturbed in its sleep, which sufficiently showed that perseverance in the attempt would awaken her fully.
To her great vexation, therefore, Minna was compelled to remain still and silent; when her lover, as if determined upon gaining her ear by music of another strain, sung the following fragment of a sea-ditty:--
"Farewell! Farewell! the voice you hear, Has left its last soft tone with you,-- Its next must join the seaward cheer, And shout among the shouting crew.
"The accents which I scarce could form Beneath your frown"s controlling check, Must give the word, above the storm, To cut the mast, and clear the wreck.
"The timid eye I dared not raise,-- The hand that shook when press"d to thine, Must point the guns upon the chase,-- Must bid the deadly cutla.s.s shine.
"To all I love, or hope, or fear,-- Honour, or own, a long adieu!
To all that life has soft and dear, Farewell! save memory of you!"[12](_c_)
He was again silent; and again she, to whom the serenade was addressed, strove in vain to arise without rousing her sister. It was impossible; and she had nothing before her but the unhappy thought that Cleveland was taking leave in his desolation, without a single glance, or a single word. He, too, whose temper was so fiery, yet who subjected his violent mood with such sedulous attention to her will--could she but have stolen a moment to say adieu--to caution him against new quarrels with Mertoun--to implore him to detach himself from such comrades as he had described--could she but have done this, who could say what effect such parting admonitions might have had upon his character--nay, upon the future events of his life?
Tantalized by such thoughts, Minna was about to make another and decisive effort, when she heard voices beneath the window, and thought she could distinguish that they were those of Cleveland and Mertoun, speaking in a sharp tone, which, at the same time, seemed cautiously suppressed, as if the speakers feared being overheard. Alarm now mingled with her former desire to rise from bed, and she accomplished at once the purpose which she had so often attempted in vain. Brenda"s arm was unloosed from her sister"s neck, without the sleeper receiving more alarm than provoked two or three unintelligible murmurs; while, with equal speed and silence, Minna put on some part of her dress, with the intention to steal to the window. But, ere she could accomplish this, the sound of the voices without was exchanged for that of blows and struggling, which terminated suddenly by a deep groan.
Terrified at this last signal of mischief, Minna sprung to the window, and endeavoured to open it, for the persons were so close under the walls of the house that she could not see them, save by putting her head out of the cas.e.m.e.nt. The iron hasp was stiff and rusted, and, as generally happens, the haste with which she laboured to undo it only rendered the task more difficult. When it was accomplished, and Minna had eagerly thrust her body half out at the cas.e.m.e.nt, those who had created the sounds which alarmed her were become invisible, excepting that she saw a shadow cross the moonlight, the substance of which must have been in the act of turning a corner, which concealed it from her sight. The shadow moved slowly, and seemed that of a man who supported another upon his shoulders; an indication which put the climax to Minna"s agony of mind. The window was not above eight feet from the ground, and she hesitated not to throw herself from it hastily, and to pursue the object which had excited her terror.
But when she came to the corner of the buildings from which the shadow seemed to have been projected, she discovered nothing which could point out the way that the figure had gone; and, after a moment"s consideration, became sensible that all attempts at pursuit would be alike wild and fruitless. Besides all the projections and recesses of the many-angled mansion, and its numerous offices--besides the various cellars, store-houses, stables, and so forth, which defied her solitary search, there was a range of low rocks, stretching down to the haven, and which were, in fact, a continuation of the ridge which formed its pier. These rocks had many indentures, hollows, and caverns, into any one of which the figure to which the shadow belonged might have retired with his fatal burden; for fatal, she feared, it was most likely to prove.
A moment"s reflection, as we have said, convinced Minna of the folly of further pursuit. Her next thought was to alarm the family; but what tale had she to tell, and of whom was that tale to be told?--On the other hand, the wounded man--if indeed he were wounded--alas, if indeed he were not mortally wounded!--might not be past the reach of a.s.sistance; and, with this idea, she was about to raise her voice, when she was interrupted by that of Claud Halcro, who was returning apparently from the haven, and singing, in his manner, a sc.r.a.p of an old Norse ditty, which might run thus in English:--
"And you shall deal the funeral dole; Ay, deal it, mother mine, To weary body, and to heavy soul, The white bread and the wine.
"And you shall deal my horses of pride; Ay, deal them, mother mine; And you shall deal my lands so wide, And deal my castles nine.
"But deal not vengeance for the deed, And deal not for the crime; The body to its place, and the soul to Heaven"s grace, And the rest in G.o.d"s own time."
The singular adaptation of these rhymes to the situation in which she found herself, seemed to Minna like a warning from Heaven. We are speaking of a land of omens and superst.i.tions, and perhaps will scarce be understood by those whose limited imagination cannot conceive how strongly these operate upon the human mind during a certain progress of society. A line of Virgil, turned up casually, was received in the seventeenth century, and in the court of England,[13] as an intimation of future events; and no wonder that a maiden of the distant and wild isles of Zetland should have considered as an injunction from Heaven, verses which happened to convey a sense a.n.a.logous to her present situation.
"I will be silent," she muttered,--"I will seal my lips--
"The body to its place, and the soul to Heaven"s grace, And the rest in G.o.d"s own time.""
"Who speaks there?" said Claud Halcro, in some alarm; for he had not, in his travels in foreign parts, been able by any means to rid himself of his native superst.i.tions. In the condition to which fear and horror had reduced her, Minna was at first unable to reply; and Halcro, fixing his eyes upon the female white figure, which he saw indistinctly, (for she stood in the shadow of the house, and the morning was thick and misty,) began to conjure her in an ancient rhyme which occurred to him as suited for the occasion, and which had in its gibberish a wild and unearthly sound, which may be lost in the ensuing translation:--
"Saint Magnus control thee, that martyr of treason; Saint Ronan rebuke thee, with rhyme and with reason; By the ma.s.s of Saint Martin, the might of Saint Mary, Be thou gone, or thy weird shall be worse if thou tarry!
If of good, go hence and hallow thee,-- If of ill, let the earth swallow thee,-- If thou"rt of air, let the grey mist fold thee,-- If of earth, let the swart mine hold thee,-- If a Pixie, seek thy ring,-- If a Nixie, seek thy spring;-- If on middle earth thou"st been Slave of sorrow, shame, and sin, Hast eat the bread of toil and strife, And dree"d the lot which men call life, Begone to thy stone! for thy coffin is scant of thee, The worm, thy playfellow, wails for the want of thee;-- Hence, houseless ghost! let the earth hide thee, Till Michael shall blow the blast, see that there thou bide thee!-- Phantom, fly hence! take the Cross for a token, Hence pa.s.s till Hallowma.s.s!--my spell is spoken."
"It is I, Halcro," muttered Minna, in a tone so thin and low, that it might have pa.s.sed for the faint reply of the conjured phantom.
"You!--you!" said Halcro, his tone of alarm changing to one of extreme surprise; "by this moonlight, which is waning, and so it is!--Who could have thought to find you, my most lovely Night, wandering abroad in your own element!--But you saw them, I reckon, as well as I?--bold enough in you to follow them, though."
"Saw whom?--follow whom?" said Minna, hoping to gain some information on the subject of her fears and anxiety.
"The corpse-lights which danced at the haven," replied Halcro; "they bode no good, I promise you--you wot well what the old rhyme says--
"Where corpse-light Dances bright, Be it day or night, Be it by light or dark, There shall corpse lie stiff and stark."