An Orkney Maid - Amelia E. Barr

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joyfully:

      “Oh, Coll! Oh, my dear Coll!” and the next moment Coll kissed her.

      “Thou hast made thyself so handsome––just to please me!”

      “Yes, for thee! Who else is there? Do I please thee now?”

      “Always thou pleases me! But tonight, I have fallen in love with thee over again!”

      “And yet Thora wanted me to wear my kirk suit,” and he walked to the glass and looked with great satisfaction at himself. “I think this suit is more becoming.”

      “My dear Coll, thou art right. A good blue flannel suit is a man’s natural garment. To everyone, rich and poor, it is becoming. If thou always dressed as thou art now dressed, I should never have the heart or spirit to contradict thee. Thou could have thy own way, year in and year out.”

      “Is that the truth, my dear Rahal? Or is it a compliment?”

      “It is the very truth, dear one!”

      “From this hour, then, I will dress to thy wish and pleasure.”

      She stepped quickly to his side and whispered: “In that case, there will not be in all Scotland a 27 more distinguished and proper man than Conall Ragnor!”

      And in a large degree Conall Ragnor was worthy of all the fine things his wife said to him. The new clothes fell gracefully over his grand figure; he stepped out freely in the light easy shoes he was wearing; there was not a single thing stiff or tight or uncomfortable about him. Even his shirt collar fell softly round his throat, and the bright crimson necktie passed under it was unrestrained by anything but a handsome pin, which left his throat bare and gave the scarf permission to hang as loosely as a sailor’s.

      At length Rahal said, “I see that Boris and the ship are safely home again.”

      “Ship and cargo safe in port, and every man on board well and hearty. On the stroke of six he will be here. He said so, and Boris keeps his word. I hear the sound of talking and laughing. Let us go to meet them.”

      They came in a merry company, Boris, with Sunna Vedder on his arm leading them. They came joyously; singing, laughing, chattering, making all the noise that youth seems to think is essential to pleasure. However, I shall not describe this evening. A dinner-dance is pretty much alike 28 in all civilized and semi-civilized communities. It will really be more descriptive to indicate a few aspects in which this function of amusement differed from one of the same kind given last night in a fashionable home or hotel in New York.

      First, the guests came all together from some agreed-upon rendezvous. They walked, for private carriages were very rare and there were none for hire. However, this walking party was generally a very pleasant introduction to a more pleasant and intimate evening. The women were wrapped up in their red or blue cloaks, and the men carried their dancing slippers, fans, bouquets, and other small necessities of the ballroom.

      Second, the old and the young had an equal share in any entertainment, and if there was a difference, it was in favour of the old. On this very night Conall Ragnor danced in every figure called, except a saraband, which he said was too slow and formal to be worth calling a dance. Even old Adam Vedder who had come on his own invitation––but welcome all the same––went through the Orkney Quickstep with the two prettiest girls present, Thora Ragnor and Maren Torrie. For honourable age was much respected and every young person wished to share his happiness with it.

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      A very marked characteristic was the evident pleasure old and young had in the gratification of their sense of taste, in the purely animal pleasure of eating good things. No one had a bad appetite, and if anyone wished for more of a dish they liked, they asked for it. Indeed they had an easy consciousness of paying their hostess a compliment, and of giving themselves a little more pleasure.

      Finally, they made the day, day; and the night, night. Such gatherings broke up about eleven o’clock; then the girls went home unwearied, to sleep, and morning found them rosy and happy, already wondering who would give them the next dance.

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       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

… they do not trust their tongues alone But speak a language of their own; Convey a libel in a frown, And wink a reputation down; Or by the tossing of a fan, Describe the lady and the man.––Swift
It is good to be merry and wise, It is good to be honest and true, It is well to be off with the old love Before you are on with the new.

      Boris did not remain long in the home port. It was drawing near to Lent, and this was a sacred term very highly regarded by the citizens of this ancient cathedral town. Of course in the Great Disruption the National Episcopal Church had suffered heavy loss, but Lent was a circumstance of the Soul, so near and dear to its memory, that even those disloyal to their Mother Church 31 could not forget or ignore it. In some cases it was secretly more faithfully observed than ever before; then its penitential prayers became intensely pathetic in their loneliness. For these self-bereft souls could not help remembering the days when they went up with the multitude to keep the Holy Fast in the House of their God.

      Rahal Ragnor had never kept it. It had been only a remnant of popery to her. Long before the Free Kirk had been born, she and all her family had been Dissenters of some kind or other. And yet her life and her home were affected by this Episcopal “In Memoriam” in a great number of small, dominating ways, so that in the course of years she had learned to respect a ceremonial that she did not endorse. For she knew that no one kept Lent with a truer heart than Conall Ragnor, and that the Lenten services in the cathedral interfered with his business to an extent nothing purely temporal would have been permitted to do.

      So, after the little dance given to Boris, there was a period of marked quietness in Kirkwall. It was as if some mighty Hand had been laid across the strings of Life and softened and subdued all their reverberations. There was no special human influence exerted for this purpose, yet no one could 32 deny the presence of some unseen, unusual element.

      “Every day seems like Sabbath Day,” said Thora.

      “It is Lent,” answered Rahal.

      “And after Lent comes Easter, dear Mother.”

      “That is the truth.”

      In the meantime Boris had gone to Edinburgh on the bark Sea Gull to complete his cargo of Scotch ginghams and sewed muslins, native jewelry and table delicacies. Perhaps, indeed, the minimum notice accorded Lent in the metropolitan city had something to do with this journey, which was not a usual one; but after the departure of the Sea Gull the Ragnor household had settled down to a period of domestic quiet. The Master had to make up the hours spent in the cathedral by a longer stay in the store, and the women at this time generally avoided visiting; they felt––though they did not speak of it––the old prohibition of unkind speech, and the theological quarrel was yet so new and raw that to touch it was to provoke controversy, instead of conversation.

      It was at such vacant times that old Adam Vedder’s visits were doubly welcome. One day in mid-Lent he came to the Ragnor house, when it 33 was raining with that steady deliberation that gives no hope of anything better. Throwing off his waterproof outer garments, he left them to drip dry in the kitchen. An old woman, watching him, observed:

      “Thou art wetting the clean floor, Master Vedder,” and he briskly answered: “That is thy business, Helga, not mine. Is thy mistress in the house?”

      “Would

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