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“I wish she may think it a pleasure, sir,” replied Brenda.
“Why, what does the girl mean, in the name of the Martyr?” replied Magnus Troil; “dost thou think my kinswoman is a heathen, who will not rejoice to see her own flesh and blood? – I would I were as sure of a good year’s fishing! – No, no! I only fear we may find her from home at present, for she is often a wanderer, and all with thinking over much on what can never be helped.”
Minna sighed deeply as her father spoke, and the Udaller went on: —
“Dost thou sigh at that, my girl? – why, ’tis the fault of half the world – let it never be thine own, Minna.”
Another suppressed sigh intimated that the caution came too late.
“I believe you are afraid of my cousin as well as Brenda is,” said the Udaller, gazing on her pale countenance; “if so, speak the word, and we will return back again as if we had the wind on our quarter, and were running fifteen knots by the line.”
“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sister, let us return!” said Brenda, imploringly; “you know – you remember – you must be well aware that Norna can do nought to help you.”
“It is but too true,” said Minna, in a subdued voice; “but I know not – she may answer a question – a question that only the miserable dare ask of the miserable.”
“Nay, my kinswoman is no miser,” answered the Udaller, who only heard the beginning of the word; “a good income she has, both in Orkney and here, and many a fair lispund of butter is paid to her. But the poor have the best share of it, and shame fall the Zetlander who begrudges them; the rest she spends, I wot not how, in her journeys through the islands. But you will laugh to see her house, and Nick Strumpfer, whom she calls Pacolet – many folks think Nick is the devil; but he is flesh and blood, like any of us – his father lived in Græmsay – I shall be glad to see Nick again.”
While the Udaller thus ran on, Brenda, who, in recompense for a less portion of imagination than her sister, was gifted with sound common sense, was debating with herself the probable effect of this visit on her sister’s health. She came finally to the resolution of speaking with her father aside, upon the first occasion which their journey should afford. To him she determined to communicate the whole particulars of their nocturnal interview with Norna, – to which, among other agitating causes, she attributed the depression of Minna’s spirits, – and then make himself the judge whether he ought to persist in his visit to a person so singular, and expose his daughter to all the shock which her nerves might possibly receive from the interview.
Just as she had arrived at this conclusion, her father, dashing the crumbs from his laced waistcoat with one hand, and receiving with the other a fourth cup of brandy and water, drank devoutly to the success of their voyage, and ordered all to be in readiness to set forward. Whilst they were saddling their ponies, Brenda, with some difficulty, contrived to make her father understand she wished to speak with him in private – no small surprise to the honest Udaller, who, though secret as the grave in the very few things where he considered secrecy as of importance, was so far from practising mystery in general, that his most important affairs were often discussed by him openly in presence of his whole family, servants included.
But far greater was his astonishment, when, remaining purposely with his daughter Brenda, a little in the wake, as he termed it, of the other riders, he heard the whole account of Norna’s visit to Burgh-Westra, and of the communication with which she had then astounded his daughters. For a long time he could utter nothing but interjections, and ended with a thousand curses on his kinswoman’s folly in telling his daughters such a history of horror.
“I have often heard,” said the Udaller, “that she was quite mad, with all her wisdom, and all her knowledge of the seasons; and, by the bones of my namesake, the Martyr, I begin now to believe it most assuredly! I know no more how to steer than if I had lost my compass. Had I known this before we set out, I think I had remained at home; but now that we have come so far, and that Norna expects us” —
“Expects us, father!” said Brenda; “how can that be possible?”
“Why, that I know not – but she that can tell how the wind is to blow, can tell which way we are designing to ride. She must not be provoked; – perhaps she has done my family this ill for the words I had with her about that lad Mordaunt Mertoun, and if so, she can undo it again; – and so she shall, or I will know the cause wherefore. But I will try fair words first.”
Finding it thus settled that they were to go forward, Brenda endeavoured next to learn from her father whether Norna’s tale was founded in reality. He shook his head, groaned bitterly, and, in a few words, acknowledged that the whole, so far as concerned her intrigue with a stranger, and her father’s death, of which she became the accidental and most innocent cause, was a matter of sad and indisputable truth. “For her infant,” he said, “he could never, by any means, learn what became of it.”
“Her infant!” exclaimed Brenda; “she spoke not a word of her infant!”
“Then I wish my tongue had been blistered,” said the Udaller, “when I told you of it! – I see that, young and old, a man has no better chance of keeping a secret from you women, than an eel to keep himself in his hold when he is sniggled with a loop of horse-hair – sooner or later the fisher teazes him out of his hole, when he has once the noose round his neck.”
“But the infant, my father,” said Brenda, still insisting on the particulars of this extraordinary story, “what became of it?”
“Carried off, I fancy, by the blackguard Vaughan,” answered the Udaller, with a gruff accent, which plainly betokened how weary he was of the subject.
“By Vaughan?” said Brenda, “the lover of poor Norna, doubtless! – what sort of man was he, father?”
“Why, much like other men, I fancy,” answered the Udaller; “I never saw him in my life. – He kept company with the Scottish families at Kirkwall; and I with the good old Norse folk – Ah! if Norna had dwelt always amongst her own kin, and not kept company with her Scottish acquaintance, she would have known nothing of Vaughan, and things might have been otherwise – But then I should have known nothing of your blessed mother, Brenda – and that,” he said, his large blue eyes shining with a tear, “would have saved me a short joy and a long sorrow.”
“Norna could but ill have supplied my mother’s place to you, father, as a companion and a friend – that is, judging from all I have heard,” said Brenda, with some hesitation. But Magnus, softened by recollections of his beloved wife, answered her with more indulgence than she expected.
“I would have been content,” he said, “to have wedded Norna at that time. It would have been the soldering of an old quarrel – the healing of an old sore. All our blood relations wished it, and, situated as I was, especially not having seen your blessed mother, I had little will to oppose their counsels. You must not judge of Norna or of me by such an appearance as we now present to you – She was young and beautiful, and I gamesome as a Highland buck, and little caring what haven I made for, having, as I thought, more than one under my lee. But Norna preferred this man Vaughan, and, as I told you before, it was, perhaps, the best kindness she could have done to me.”
“Ah, poor kinswoman!” said Brenda. “But believe you, father, in the high powers which she claims – in the mysterious vision of the dwarf – in the” —
She was interrupted in these questions by Magnus, to whom they were obviously displeasing.
“I believe, Brenda,” he said, “according to the belief of my forefathers – I pretend not to be a wiser man than they were in their time, – and they all believed that, in cases of great worldly distress, Providence opened the eyes of the mind, and afforded the sufferers a vision of futurity. It was but a trimming of the boat, with reverence,” – here he touched his hat reverentially; “and, after all the shifting of ballast, poor Norna is as heavily loaded in the bows as ever was an Orkneyman’s yawl at the dog-fishing – she has more than affliction enough on board to balance whatever gifts she may have had in the midst of her calamity. They are as painful to her, poor soul, as a crown of thorns would be to her brows, though it were the badge of the empire of Denmark. And do not you, Brenda, seek to be wiser than your fathers. Your sister Minna, before she was so ill, had as much reverence for whatever was produced in Norse, as if it had been in the Pope’s bull, which is all written in pure Latin.”
“Poor Norna!” repeated Brenda; “and her child – was it never recovered?”
“What do I know of her child,” said the Udaller, more gruffly than before, “except that she was very ill, both before and after the birth, though we kept her as merry as we could with pipe and harp, and so forth; – the child had come before its time into this bustling world, so it is likely it has been long dead. – But you know nothing of all these matters, Brenda; so get along for a foolish girl, and ask no more questions about what it does not become you to enquire into.”
So saying, the Udaller gave his sturdy little palfrey the spur, and cantering forward over rough and smooth, while the pony’s accuracy and firmness of step put all difficulties of the path at secure defiance, he placed himself soon by the side of the melancholy Minna, and permitted her sister to have no farther share in his conversation than as it was addressed to them jointly. She could but comfort herself with the hope, that, as Minna’s disease appeared to have its seat in the imagination, the remedies recommended by Norna might have some chance of being effectual, since, in all probability, they would be addressed to the same faculty.
Their way had hitherto held chiefly over moss and moor, varied occasionally by the necessity of making a circuit around the heads of those long lagoons, called voes, which run up into and indent the country in such a manner, that, though the Mainland of Zetland may be thirty miles or more in length, there is, perhaps, no part of it which is more than three miles distant from the salt water. But they had now approached the north-western extremity of the isle, and travelled along the top of an immense ridge of rocks, which had for ages withstood the rage of the Northern Ocean, and of all the winds by which it is buffeted.
At length exclaimed Magnus to his daughters, “There is Norna’s dwelling! – Look up, Minna, my love; for if this does not make you laugh, nothing will. – Saw you ever any thing but an osprey that would have made such a nest for herself as that is? – By my namesake’s bones, there is not the like of it that living thing ever dwelt in, (having no wings and the use of reason,) unless it chanced to be the Frawa-Stack off Papa, where the King’s daughter of Norway was shut up to keep her from her lovers – and all to little purpose, if the tale be true;80 for, maidens, I would have you to wot that it is hard to keep flax from the lowe.”81
CHAPTER VII
Thrice from the cavern’s darksome wombHer groaning voice arose;And come, my daughter, fearless come,And fearless tell thy woes!Meikle.The dwelling of Norna, though none but a native of Zetland, familiar, during his whole life, with every variety of rock-scenery, could have seen any thing ludicrous in this situation, was not unaptly compared by Magnus Troil to the eyry of the osprey, or sea-eagle. It was very small, and had been fabricated out of one of those dens which are called Burghs and Picts-houses in Zetland, and Duns on the mainland of Scotland and the Hebrides, and which seem to be the first effort at architecture – the connecting link betwixt a fox’s hole in a cairn of loose stones, and an attempt to construct a human habitation out of the same materials, without the use of lime or cement of any kind, – without any timber, so far as can be seen from their remains, – without any knowledge of the arch or of the stair. Such as they are, however, the numerous remains of these dwellings – for there is one found on every headland, islet, or point of vantage, which could afford the inhabitants additional means of defence – tend to prove that the remote people by whom these Burghs were constructed, were a numerous race, and that the islands had then a much greater population, than, from other circumstances, we might have been led to anticipate.
The Burgh of which we at present speak had been altered and repaired at a later period, probably by some petty despot, or sea-rover, who, tempted by the security of the situation, which occupied the whole of a projecting point of rock, and was divided from the mainland by a rent or chasm of some depth, had built some additions to it in the rudest style of Gothic defensive architecture; – had plastered the inside with lime and clay, and broken out windows for the admission of light and air; and, finally, by roofing it over, and dividing it into stories, by means of beams of wreck-wood, had converted the whole into a tower, resembling a pyramidical dovecot, formed by a double wall, still containing within its thickness that set of circular galleries, or concentric rings, which is proper to all the forts of this primitive construction, and which seem to have constituted the only shelter which they were originally qualified to afford to their shivering inhabitants.82
This singular habitation, built out of the loose stones which lay scattered around, and exposed for ages to the vicissitudes of the elements, was as grey, weatherbeaten, and wasted, as the rock on which it was founded, and from which it could not easily be distinguished, so completely did it resemble in colour, and so little did it differ in regularity of shape, from a pinnacle or fragment of the cliff.
Minna’s habitual indifference to all that of late had passed around her, was for a moment suspended by the sight of an abode, which, at another and happier period of her life, would have attracted at once her curiosity and her wonder. Even now she seemed to feel interest as she gazed upon this singular retreat, and recollected it was that of certain misery and probable insanity, connected, as its inhabitant asserted, and Minna’s faith admitted, with power over the elements, and the capacity of intercourse with the invisible world.
“Our kinswoman,” she muttered, “has chosen her dwelling well, with no more of earth than a sea-fowl might rest upon, and all around sightless tempests and raging waves. Despair and magical power could not have a fitter residence.”
Brenda, on the other hand, shuddered when she looked on the dwelling to which they were advancing, by a difficult, dangerous, and precarious path, which sometimes, to her great terror, approached to the verge of the precipice; so that, Zetlander as she was, and confident as she had reason to be, in the steadiness and sagacity of the sure-footed pony, she could scarce suppress an inclination to giddiness, especially at one point, when, being foremost of the party, and turning a sharp angle of the rock, her feet, as they projected from the side of the pony, hung for an instant sheer over the ledge of the precipice, so that there was nothing save empty space betwixt the sole of her shoe and the white foam of the vexed ocean, which dashed, howled, and foamed, five hundred feet below. What would have driven a maiden of another country into delirium, gave her but a momentary uneasiness, which was instantly lost in the hope that the impression which the scene appeared to make on her sister’s imagination might be favourable to her cure.
She could not help looking back to see how Minna should pass the point of peril, which she herself had just rounded; and could hear the strong voice of the Udaller, though to him such rough paths were familiar as the smooth sea-beach, call, in a tone of some anxiety, “Take heed, jarto,”83 as Minna, with an eager look, dropped her bridle, and stretched forward her arms, and even her body, over the precipice, in the attitude of the wild swan, when balancing itself, and spreading its broad pinions, it prepares to launch from the cliff upon the bosom of the winds. Brenda felt, at that instant, a pang of unutterable terror, which left a strong impression on her nerves, even when relieved, as it instantly was, by her sister recovering herself and sitting upright on her saddle, the opportunity and temptation (if she felt it) passing away, as the quiet steady animal which supported her rounded the projecting angle, and turned its patient and firm step from the verge of the precipice.
They now attained a more level and open space of ground, being the flat top of an isthmus of projecting rock, narrowing again towards a point where it was terminated by the chasm which separated the small peak, or stack, occupied by Norna’s habitation, from the main ridge of cliff and precipice. This natural fosse, which seemed to have been the work of some convulsion of nature, was deep, dark, and irregular, narrower towards the bottom, which could not be distinctly seen, and widest at top, having the appearance as if that part of the cliff occupied by the building had been half rent away from the isthmus which it terminated, – an idea favoured by the angle at which it seemed to recede from the land, and lean towards the sea, with the building which crowned it.
This angle of projection was so considerable, that it required recollection to dispel the idea that the rock, so much removed from the perpendicular, was about to precipitate itself seaward, with its old tower: and a timorous person would have been afraid to put foot upon it, lest an addition of weight, so inconsiderable as that of the human body, should hasten a catastrophe which seemed at every instant impending.
Without troubling himself about such fantasies, the Udaller rode towards the tower, and there dismounting along with his daughters, gave the ponies in charge to one of their domestics, with directions to disencumber them of their burdens, and turn them out for rest and refreshment upon the nearest heath. This done, they approached the gate, which seemed formerly to have been connected with the land by a rude drawbridge, some of the apparatus of which was still visible. But the rest had been long demolished, and was replaced by a stationary footbridge, formed of barrel-staves covered with turf, very narrow and ledgeless, and supported by a sort of arch, constructed out of the jaw-bones of the whale. Along this “brigg of dread” the Udaller stepped with his usual portly majesty of stride, which threatened its demolition and his own at the same time; his daughters trode more lightly and more safely after him, and the whole party stood before the low and rugged portal of Norna’s habitation.
“If she should be abroad after all,” said Magnus, as he plied the black oaken door with repeated blows; – “but if so, we will at least lie by a day for her return, and make Nick Strumpfer pay the demurrage in bland and brandy.”
As he spoke, the door opened, and displayed, to the alarm of Brenda, and the surprise of Minna herself, a square-made dwarf, about four feet five inches high, with a head of most portentous size, and features correspondent – namely, a huge mouth, a tremendous nose, with large black nostrils, which seemed to have been slit upwards, blubber lips of an unconscionable size, and huge wall-eyes, with which he leared, sneered, grinned, and goggled on the Udaller as an old acquaintance, without uttering a single word. The young women could hardly persuade themselves that they did not see before their eyes the very demon Trolld, who made such a distinguished figure in Norna’s legend. Their father went on addressing this uncouth apparition in terms of such condescending friendship as the better sort apply to their inferiors, when they wish, for any immediate purpose, to conciliate or coax them, – a tone, by the by, which generally contains, in its very familiarity, as much offence as the more direct assumption of distance and superiority.
“Ha, Nick! honest Nick!” said the Udaller, “here you are, lively and lovely as Saint Nicholas your namesake, when he is carved with an axe for the headpiece of a Dutch dogger. How dost thou do, Nick, or Pacolet, if you like that better? Nicholas, here are my two daughters, nearly as handsome as thyself thou seest.”
Nick grinned, and did a clumsy obeisance by way of courtesy, but kept his broad misshapen person firmly placed in the doorway.
“Daughters,” continued the Udaller, who seemed to have his reasons for speaking this Cerberus fair, at least according to his own notions of propitiation, – “this is Nick Strumpfer, maidens, whom his mistress calls Pacolet, being a light-limbed dwarf, as you see, like him that wont to fly about, like a Scourie, on his wooden hobbyhorse, in the old storybook of Valentine and Orson, that you, Minna, used to read whilst you were a child. I assure you he can keep his mistress’s counsel, and never told one of her secrets in his life – ha, ha, ha!”
The ugly dwarf grinned ten times wider than before, and showed the meaning of the Udaller’s jest, by opening his immense jaws, and throwing back his head, so as to discover, that, in the immense cavity of his mouth, there only remained the small shrivelled remnant of a tongue, capable, perhaps, of assisting him in swallowing his food, but unequal to the formation of articulate sounds. Whether this organ had been curtailed by cruelty, or injured by disease, it was impossible to guess; but that the unfortunate being had not been originally dumb, was evident from his retaining the sense of hearing. Having made this horrible exhibition, he repaid the Udaller’s mirth with a loud, horrid, and discordant laugh, which had something in it the more hideous that his mirth seemed to be excited by his own misery. The sisters looked on each other in silence and fear, and even the Udaller appeared disconcerted.
“And how now?” he proceeded, after a minute’s pause. “When didst thou wash that throat of thine, that is about the width of the Pentland Frith, with a cup of brandy? Ha, Nick! I have that with me which is sound stuff, boy, ha!”
The dwarf bent his beetle-brows, shook his misshapen head, and made a quick sharp indication, throwing his right hand up to his shoulder with the thumb pointed backwards.
“What! my kinswoman,” said the Udaller, comprehending the signal, “will be angry? Well, shalt have a flask to carouse when she is from home, old acquaintance; – lips and throats may swallow though they cannot speak.”
Pacolet grinned a grim assent.
“And now,” said the Udaller, “stand out of the way, Pacolet, and let me carry my daughters to see their kinswoman. By the bones of Saint Magnus, it shall be a good turn in thy way! – nay, never shake thy head, man; for if thy mistress be at home, see her we will.”
The dwarf again intimated the impossibility of their being admitted, partly by signs, partly by mumbling some uncouth and most disagreeable sounds, and the Udaller’s mood began to arise.
“Tittle tattle, man!” said he; “trouble not me with thy gibberish, but stand out of the way, and the blame, if there be any, shall rest with me.”
So saying, Magnus Troil laid his sturdy hand upon the collar of the recusant dwarf’s jacket of blue wadmaal, and, with a strong, but not a violent grasp, removed him from the doorway, pushed him gently aside, and entered, followed by his two daughters, whom a sense of apprehension, arising out of all which they saw and heard, kept very close to him. A crooked and dusky passage through which Magnus led the way, was dimly enlightened by a shot-hole, communicating with the interior of the building, and originally intended, doubtless, to command the entrance by a hagbut or culverin. As they approached nearer, for they walked slowly and with hesitation, the light, imperfect as it was, was suddenly obscured; and, on looking upward to discern the cause, Brenda was startled to observe the pale and obscurely-seen countenance of Norna gazing downward upon them, without speaking a word. There was nothing extraordinary in this, as the mistress of the mansion might be naturally enough looking out to see what guests were thus suddenly and unceremoniously intruding themselves on her presence. Still, however, the natural paleness of her features, exaggerated by the light in which they were at present exhibited, – the immovable sternness of her look, which showed neither kindness nor courtesy of civil reception, – her dead silence, and the singular appearance of every thing about her dwelling, augmented the dismay which Brenda had already conceived. Magnus Troil and Minna had walked slowly forward, without observing the apparition of their singular hostess.