The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк БаумЧитать онлайн книгу.
and embittered with the destruction of Brenda’s happiness for ever.
“Innocent, unhappy sister!” such were her reflections; “ thou that art ten times better than I, because so unpretending — so unassuming in thine excellence! How is it possible that I should cease to feel a pang, which is only transferred from my bosom to thine?”
As these cruel thoughts crossed her mind, she could not refrain from straining her sister so close to her bosom, that, after a heavy sigh, Brenda awoke.
“Sister,” she said, “ is it you? I dreamed I lay on one of those monuments which Claud Halcro described to us, where the effigy of the inhabitant beneath lies carved in stone upon the sepulchre. I dreamed such a marble form lay by my side, and that it suddenly acquired enough of life and animation to fold me to its cold, moist bosom — and it is yours, Minna, that is indeed so chilly. — You are ill, my dearest Minna! for God’s sake, let me rise and call Euphane Fea. — What ails you? has Norna been here again?”
“Call no one hither,” said Minna, detaining her; “ nothing ails me for which any one has a remedy — nothing but apprehensions of evil worse than even Norna could prophesy. But God is above all, my dear Brenda; and let us pray to him to turn, as he only can, our evil into good.”
They did jointly repeat their usual prayer for strength and protection from on high, and again composed themselves to sleep, suffering no word save “ God bless you,” to pass betwixt them, when their devotions were finished; thus scrupulously dedicating to Heaven their last waking words, if human frailty prevented them from commanding their last waking thoughts. Brenda slept first, and Minna, strongly resisting the dark and evil presentiments which again began to crowd themselves upon her imagination, was at last so fortunate as to slumber also.
The storm which Halcro had expected began about daybreak, - a squall, heavy with wind and rain, such as is often felt, even during the finest part of the season, in these latitudes. At the whistle of the wind, and the clatter of the rain on the shingle-roofing of the fishers’ huts, many a poor woman was awakened, and called on her children to hold up their little hands, and join in prayer for the safety of the dear husband and father, who was even then at the mercy of the disturbed elements. Around the house of Burgh-Westra, chimneys howled, and windows clashed. The props and rafters of the higher parts of the building, most of them formed out of wreck-wood, groaned and quivered, as fearing to be again dispersed by the tempest. But the daughters of Magnus Troil continued to sleep as softly and as sweetly as if the hand of Chantrey had formed them out of statuary-marble. The squall had passed away, and the sunbeams, dispersing the clouds which drifted to leeward, shone full through the lattice, when Minna first started from the profound sleep into which fatigue and mental exhaustion had lulled her, and, raising herself on her arm, began to recall events, which, after this interval of profound repose, seemed almost to resemble the baseless visions of the night. She almost doubted if what she recalled of horror, previous to her starting from her bed, was not indeed the fiction of a dream, suggested, perhaps, by some external sounds.
“I will see Claud Halcro instantly,” she said; “he may know something of these strange noises, as he was stirring at the time.”
With that she sprung from bed, but hardly stood upright on the floor, ere her sister exclaimed, ‘« Gracious Heaven! Minna, what ails your foot — your ankle?”
She looked down, and saw with surprise, which amounted to agony, that both her feet, but particularly one of them, was stained with dark crimson, resembling the colour of dried.
Without attempting to answer Brenda, she rushed to the window, and cast a desperate look on the grass beneath, for there she knew she must have contracted the fatal stain. But the rain, which had fallen there in treble quantity, as well from the heavens, as from the eaves of the house, had washed away that guilty witness, if indeed such had ever existed. All was fresh and fair, and the blades of grass, overcharged and bent with raindrops, glittered like diamonds in the bright morning sun.
While Minna stared upon the spangled verdure, with her full dark eyes fixed and enlarged to circles by the intensity of her terror, Brenda was hanging about her, and with many an eager inquiry, pressed to know whether or how she had hurt herself?
“A piece of glass cut through my shoe,” said Minna, bethinking herself that some excuse was necessary to her sister; “ I scarce felt it at the time.”
“And yet see how it has bled,” said her sister. “ Sweet Minna,” she added, approaching her with a wetted towel, “ let me wipe the blood off — the hurt may be worse than you think of.”
But as she approached, Minna, who saw no other way of preventing discovery that the blood with which she was stained had never flowed in her own veins, harshly and hastily repelled the proffered kindness. Poor Brenda, unconscious of any offence which she had given to her sister, drew back two or three paces on finding her service thus unkindly refused., and stood gazing at Minna with looks in which there was more of surprise and mortified affection than of resentment, but which had yet something also of natural displeasure.
“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 concert it into”
The rest of the sentence she muttered in a tone so in-iistinct, that it could not be apprehended; while, at the »ame time, she washed the bloodstains from her feet and left inkle. Brenda, who still remained looking on at some dis-ance, endeavoured in vain to assume some tone which might eestablish 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?”
“Oh yes!” replied Brenda, framjng 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 assumed 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 anything;” and this contemptuous epithet was in particular bestowed on the Captain by Mrs. 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 haci presented her. The old Lady Glowrowrum had a system of her own, which she hinted to Mistress Yellowley, after thanking God that her own connection with the Burgh-Westra family was by the lass’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