Robert Falconer by George MacDonald (reading fiction TXT) 📕

down to the table, and began to pour out the tea, and he came to himself again. Presently her father entered. His greeting was warm and mild and sleepy. He had come from poring over Spotiswood, in search of some Will o' the wisp or other, and had grown stupid from want of success. But he revived after a cup of tea, and began to talk about northern genealogies; and Ericson did his best to listen. Robert wondered at the knowledge he displayed: he had been tutor the foregoing summer in one of the oldest and poorest, and therefore proudest families in Caithness. But all the time his host talked Ericson's eyes hovered about Mysie, who sat gazing before her with look distraught, with wide eyes and scarce-moving eyelids, beholding something neither on sea or shore; and Mr. Lindsay would now and then correct Ericson in some egregious blunder; while Mysie would now and then start awake and ask Robert or Ericson to take another cup of tea. Before the sentence was finished, however, she would let it die away, speaking the last words mechanically, as her consciousness relapsed into dreamland. Had not Robert been with Ericson, he would have found it wearisome enough; and except things took a turn, Ericson could hardly be satisfied with the pleasure of the evening. Things did take a turn.

'Robert has brought his fiddle,' said Ericson, as the tea was removed.

'I hope he will be kind enough to play something,' said Mr. Lindsay.

'I'll do that,' answered Robert, with alacrity. 'But ye maunna expec' ower muckle, for I'm but a prentice-han',' he added, as he got the instrument ready.

Before he had drawn the bow once across it, attention awoke in Mysie's eyes; and before he had finished playing, Ericson must have had quite as much of the 'beauty born of murmuring sound' as was good for him. Little did Mysie think of the sky of love, alive with silent thoughts, that arched over her. The earth teems with love that is unloved. The universe itself is one sea of infinite love, from whose consort of harmonies if a stray note steal across the sense, it starts bewildered.

Robert played better than usual. His touch grew intense, and put on all its delicacy, till it was like that of the spider, which, as Pope so admirably says,

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

And while Ericson watched its shadows, the music must have taken hold of him too; for when Robert ceased, he sang a wild ballad of the northern sea, to a tune strange as itself. It was the only time Robert ever heard him sing. Mysie's eyes grew wider and wider as she listened. When it was over,

'Did ye write that sang yersel', Mr. Ericson?' asked Robert.

'No,' answered Ericson. 'An old shepherd up in our parts used to say it to me when I was a boy.'

'Didna he sing 't?' Robert questioned further.

'No, he didn't. But I heard an old woman crooning it to a child in a solitary cottage on the shore of Stroma, near the Swalchie whirlpool, and that was the tune she sang it to, if singing it could be called.'

'I don't quite understand it, Mr. Ericson,' said Mysie. 'What does it mean?'

'There was once a beautiful woman lived there-away,' began Ericson.-But I have not room to give the story as he told it, embellishing it, no doubt, as with such a mere tale was lawful enough, from his own imagination. The substance was that a young man fell in love with a beautiful witch, who let him go on loving her till he cared for nothing but her, and then began to kill him by laughing at him. For no witch can fall in love herself, however much she may like to be loved. She mocked him till he drowned himself in a pool on the seashore. Now the witch did not know that; but as she walked along the shore, looking for things, she saw his hand lying over the edge of a rocky basin. Nothing is more useful to a witch than the hand of a man, so she went to pick it up. When she found it fast to an arm, she would have chopped it off, but seeing whose it was, she would, for some reason or other best known to a witch, draw off his ring first. For it was an enchanted ring which she had given him to bewitch his love, and now she wanted both it and the hand to draw to herself the lover of a young maiden whom she hated. But the dead hand closed its fingers upon hers, and her power was powerless against the dead. And the tide came rushing up, and the dead hand held her till she was drowned. She lies with her lover to this day at the bottom of the Swalchie whirlpool; and when a storm is at hand, strange moanings rise from the pool, for the youth is praying the witch lady for her love, and she is praying him to let go her hand.

While Ericson told the story the room still glimmered about Robert as if all its light came from Mysie's face, upon which the flickering firelight alone played. Mr. Lindsay sat a little back from the rest, with an amused expression: legends of such sort did not come within the scope of his antiquarian reach, though he was ready enough to believe whatever tempted his own taste, let it be as destitute of likelihood as the story of the dead hand. When Ericson ceased, Mysie gave a deep sigh, and looked full of thought, though I daresay it was only feeling. Mr. Lindsay followed with an old tale of the Sinclairs, of which he said Ericson's reminded him, though the sole association was that the foregoing was a Caithness story, and the Sinclairs are a Caithness family. As soon as it was over, Mysie, who could not hide all her impatience during its lingering progress, asked Robert to play again. He took up his violin, and with great expression gave the air of Ericson's ballad two or three times over, and then laid down the instrument. He saw indeed that it was too much for Mysie, affecting her more, thus presented after the story, than the singing of the ballad itself. Thereupon Ericson, whose spirits had risen greatly at finding that he could himself secure Mysie's attention, and produce the play of soul in feature which he so much delighted to watch, offered another story; and the distant rush of the sea, borne occasionally into the 'grateful gloom' upon the cold sweep of a February wind, mingled with one tale after another, with which he entranced two of his audience, while the third listened mildly content.

The last of the tales Ericson told was as follows:-

'One evening-twilight in spring, a young English student, who had wandered northwards as far as the outlying fragments of Scotland called the Orkney and Shetland islands, found himself on a small island of the latter group, caught in a storm of wind and hail, which had come on suddenly. It was in vain to look about for any shelter; for not only did the storm entirely obscure the landscape, but there was nothing around him save a desert moss.

'At length, however, as he walked on for mere walking's sake, he found himself on the verge of a cliff, and saw, over the brow of it, a few feet below him, a ledge of rock, where he might find some shelter from the blast, which blew from behind. Letting himself down by his hands, he alighted upon something that crunched beneath his tread, and found the bones of many small animals scattered about in front of a little cave in the rock, offering the refuge he sought, He went in, and sat upon a stone. The storm increased in violence, and as the darkness grew he became uneasy, for he did not relish the thought of spending the night in the cave. He had parted from his companions on the opposite side of the island, and it added to his uneasiness that they must be full of apprehension about him. At last there came a lull in the storm, and the same instant he heard a footfall, stealthy and light as that of a wild beast, upon the bones at the mouth of the cave. He started up in some fear, though the least thought might have satisfied him that there could be no very dangerous animals upon the island. Before he had time to think, however, the face of a woman appeared in the opening. Eagerly the wanderer spoke. She started at the sound of his voice. He could not see her well, because she was turned towards the darkness of the cave.

'"Will you tell me how to find my way across the moor to Shielness?" he asked.

'"You cannot find it to-night," she answered, in a sweet tone, and with a smile that bewitched him, revealing the whitest of teeth.

'"What am I to do, then?" he asked.

'"My mother will give you shelter, but that is all she has to offer."

'"And that is far more than I expected a minute ago," he replied. "I shall be most grateful."

'She turned in silence and left the cave. The youth followed.

'She was barefooted, and her pretty brown feet went catlike over the sharp stones, as she led the way down a rocky path to the shore. Her garments were scanty and torn, and her hair blew tangled in the wind. She seemed about five-and-twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and smooth-skinned. Her thin nostrils were tremulous as eyelids, and her lips, whose curves were faultless, had no colour to give sign of indwelling blood. What her eyes were like he could not see, for she had never lifted the delicate films of her eyelids.

'At the foot of the cliff they came upon a little hut leaning against it, and having for its inner apartment a natural hollow within it. Smoke was spreading over the face of the rock, and the grateful odour of food gave hope to the hungry student. His guide opened the door of the cottage; he followed her in, and saw a woman bending over a fire in the middle of the floor. On the fire lay a large fish boiling. The daughter spoke a few words, and the mother turned and welcomed the stranger. She had an old and very wrinkled, but honest face, and looked troubled. She dusted the only chair in the cottage, and placed it for him by the side of the fire, opposite the one window, whence he saw a little patch of yellow sand over which the spent waves spread themselves out listlessly. Under this window was a bench, upon which the daughter threw herself in an unusual posture, resting her chin upon her hand. A moment after the youth caught the first glimpse of her blue eyes. They were fixed upon him with a strange look of greed, amounting to craving, but as if aware that they belied or betrayed her, she dropped them instantly.