so I spake to him again for luck’s sake, and he called me a chattering old devil; but it was quite and clean in a civil sort of way.”
“Enough, enough, Swertha,” answered Mordaunt; “ and now get up, and find me something to eat, for I have dined but poorly.”
“Then you have been at the new folk’s at Stourburgh; for there is no another house in a’ the Isles but they wad hae gi’en ye the best share of the best they had. Saw he aught of Norna of the Fitful Head? She went to Stourburgh this morning, and returned to the town at night.”
“Returned! — then she is here? How could she travel three leagues and better in so short a time?”
“Wha kens how she travels?” replied Swertha; “ but I heard her tell the Ranzelman wi’ my ain lugs, that she intended that day to have gone on to Burgh-Westra, to speak with Minna Troil, but she had seen that at Stourburgh (indeed she said at Harfra, for she never calls it by the other name of Stourburgh), that sent her back to our town. But gang your ways round, and ye shall have plenty of supper-^ours is nae toom pantry, and still less a locked ane, though my master be a stranger, and no just that tight in the upper rigging, as the Ranzelman says.”
Mordaunt walked round to the kitchen accordingly, where Swertha’s care speedily accommodated him with a plentiful, though coarse meal, which indemnified him for the scanty hospitality he had experienced at Stourburgh.
In the morning, some feelings of fatigue made young Mertoun later than usual in leaving his bed; so that, contrary to what was the ordinary case, he found his father in the apartment where they eat, and which served them indeed for every common purpose, save that of a bedchamber or of a kitchen. The son greeted the father in mute reverence, and waited until he should address him.
“You were absent yesterday, Mordaunt?” said his father. Mordaunt’s absence had lasted a week and more; but he had often observed that his father never seemed to notice how time passed during the period when he was affected with his sullen vapours. He assented to what the elder Mr. Mertoun had said.
“And you were at Burgh-Westra, as I think?” continued his father.
“Yes, sir,” replied Mordaunt.
The elder Mertoun was then silent for some time, and paced the floor in deep silence, with an air of sombre reflection, which seemed as if he were about to relapse into his moody fit. Suddenly turning to his son, however, he observed in the tone of a query, “ Magnus Troil has two daughters — they must be now young women; they are thought handsome, of course?”
“Very generally, sir,” answered Mordaunt, rather surprised to hear his father making any inquiries about the individuals of a sex which he usually thought so light of, a surprise which was much increased by the next question, put as abruptly as the former.
“Which think you the handsomest?”
“I, sir?” replied his son with some wonder, but without embarrassment — ” I really am no judge — I never considered which was absolutely the handsomest. They are both very pretty young women.”
“You evade my question, Mordaunt; perhaps I have some very particular reason for my wish to be acquainted with your taste in this matter. I am not used to waste words for no purpose. I ask you again, which of Magnus Troil’s daughters you think most handsome?”
“Really, sir,” replied Mordaunt — ”but you only jest in asking me such a question.”
“Young man,” replied Mertoun, with eyes which began to roll and sparkle with impatience, “ I never jest. I desire an answer to my question.”
“Then, upon my word, sir,” said Mordaunt, “it is not in my power to form a judgment betwixt the young ladies — they are both very pretty, but by no means like each other. Minna is dark-haired, and more grave than her sister — more serious, but by no means either dull or sullen.”
“Um,” replied his father; “ you have been gravely brought up, and this Minna, I suppose, pleases you most?”
“No, sir, really I can give her no preference over her sister Brenda, who is as gay as a lamb in a spring morning — less tall than her sister, but so well formed, and so excellent a dancer”
“That she is best qualified to amuse the young man, who has a dull home and a moody father? “ said Mr. Mertoun.
Nothing in his father’s conduct had ever surprised Mordaunt so much as the obstinacy with which he seemed to pursue a theme so foreign to his general train of thought, and habits of conversation; but he contented himself with answering once more, “that both the young ladies were highly admirable, but he had never thought of them with the wish to do either injustice, by ranking her lower than her sister — that others would probably decide between them, as they happened to be partial to a grave or a gay disposition, or to a dark or fair complexion; but that he could see no excellent quality in the one that was not balanced by something equally captivating in the other.”
It is possible that even the coolness with which Mordaunt made this explanation might not have satisfied his father concerning the subject of investigation; but Swertha at this moment entered with breakfast, and the youth, notwithstanding his late supper, engaged in that meal with an air which satisfied Mertoun that he held it matter of more grave importance than the conversation which they had just had, and that he had nothing more to say upon the subject explanatory of the answers he had already given. He shaded his brow with his hand, and looked long fixedly upon the young man as he was busied with his morning meal. There was neither abstraction nor a sense of being observed in any of his motions; all was frank, natural, and open.
“He is fancy-free,” muttered Mertoun to himself — ” so young, so lively, and so imaginative, so handsome and so attractive in face and person, strange, that at his age, and in his circumstances, he should have avoided the meshes which catch all the world beside!”
When the breakfast was over, the elder Mertoun, instead of proposing, as usual, that his son, who awaited his commands, should betake himself to one branch or other of his studies, assumed his hat and staff, and desired that Mordaunt should accompany him to the top of the cliff, called Sumburgh Head, and from thence look out upon the state of the ocean, agitated as it must still be by the tempest of the preceding day. Mordaunt was at the age when young men willingly exchange sedentary pursuits for active exercise, and started up with alacrity to comply with his father’s desire; and in the course of a few minutes they were mounting together the hill, which, ascending from the land side in a long, steep, and grassy slope, sinks at once from the summit to the sea in an abrupt and tremendous precipice.
The day was delightful; there was just so much motion in the air as to disturb the little fleecy-’clouds which were scattered on the horizon, and by floating them occasionally over the sun, to chequer the landscape with that variety of light and shade which often gives to a bare and unenclosed scene, for the time at least, a species of charm approaching to the varieties of a cultivated and planted country. A thousand flitting hues of light and shade played over the expanse of wild moor, rocks, and inlets, which, as they climbed higher and higher, spread in wide and wider circuit around them.
The elder Mertoun often paused and looked round upon. the scene, and for some time his son supposed that he halted to enjoy its beauties; but as they ascended still higher up the hill, he remarked his shortened breath and his uncertain and toilsome step, and became assured, with some feelings of alarm, that his father’s strength was, for the moment, exhausted, and that he found the ascent more toilsome and fatiguing than usual. To draw close to his side, and offer him in silence the assistance of his arm, was an act of youthful deference to advanced age, as well as of filial reverence; and Mertoun seemed at first so to receive it, for he took in silence the advantage of the aid thus afforded him.
It was but for two or three minutes, however, that the father availed himself of his son’s support. They had not ascended fifty yards farther, ere he pushed Mordaunt suddenly, if not rudely, from him; and, as if stung into exertion by some sudden recollection, began to mount the acclivity with such long and quick steps, that Mordaunt, in his turn, was obliged to exert himself to keep pace with him. He