“You do me injustice, my kind preserver,” replied Mordaunt; “I am not tired of your society; but I have duties which recall me to ordinary life.”
“Duties!” repeated Norna; “and what duties can or ought to interfere with the gratitude which you owe to me?—Duties! Your thoughts are on the use of your gun, or on clambering among the rocks in quest of sea-fowl. For these exercises your strength doth not yet fit you; and yet these are the duties to which you are so anxious to return!”
“Not so, my good and kind mistress,” said Mordaunt.—“To name one duty, out of many, which makes me seek to leave you, now that my strength permits, let me mention that of a son to his father.”
“To your father!” said Norna, with a laugh that had something in it almost frantic. “O! you know not how we can, in these islands, at once cancel such duties! And, for your father,” she added, proceeding more calmly, “what has he done for you, to deserve the regard and duty you speak of?—Is he not the same, who, as you have long since told me, left you for so many years poorly nourished among strangers, without enquiring whether you were alive or dead, and only sending, from time to time, supplies in such fashion, as men relieve the leprous wretch to whom they fling alms from a distance? And, in these later years, when he had made you the companion of his misery, he has been, by starts your pedagogue, by starts your tormentor, but never, Mordaunt, never your father.”
“Something of truth there is in what you say,” replied Mordaunt: “My father is not fond; but he is, and has ever been, effectively kind. Men have not their affections in their power; and it is a child’s duty to be grateful for the benefits which he receives, even when coldly bestowed. My father has conferred instruction on me, and I am convinced he loves me. He is unfortunate; and, even if he loved me not”——
“And he does not love you,” said Norna, hastily; “he never loved any thing, or any one, save himself. He is unfortunate, but well are his misfortunes deserved.—O Mordaunt, you have one parent only,—one parent, who loves you as the drops of the heart-blood!”
“I know I have but one parent,” replied Mordaunt; “my mother has been long dead.—But your words contradict each other.”
“They do not—they do not,” said Norna, in a paroxysm of the deepest feeling; “you have but one parent. Your unhappy mother is not dead—I would to God that she were!—but she is not dead. Thy mother is the only parent that loves thee; and I—I, Mordaunt,” throwing herself on his neck, “am that most unhappy—yet most happy mother.”
She closed him in a strict and convulsive embrace; and tears, the first, perhaps, which she had shed for many years, burst in torrents as she sobbed on his neck. Astonished at what he heard, felt, and saw,—moved by the excess of her agitation, yet disposed to ascribe this burst of passion to insanity,—Mordaunt vainly endeavoured to tranquillize the mind of this extraordinary person.
“Ungrateful boy!” she said, “who but a mother would have watched over thee as I have watched? From the instant I saw thy father, when he little thought by whom he was observed, a space now many years back, I knew him well; and, under his charge, I saw you, then a stripling,—while Nature, speaking loud in my bosom, assured me, thou wert blood of my blood, and bone of my bone. Think how often you have wondered to see me, when least expected, in your places of pastime and resort! Think how often my eye has watched you on the giddy precipices, and muttered those charms which subdue the evil demons, who show themselves to the climber on the giddiest point of his path, and force him to quit his hold! Did I not hang around thy neck, in pledge of thy safety, that chain of gold, which an Elfin King gave to the founder of our race? Would I have given that dear gift to any but to the son of my bosom?—Mordaunt, my power has done that for thee that a mere mortal mother would dread to think of. I have conjured the Mermaid at midnight, that thy bark might be prosperous on the Haaf! I have hushed the winds, and navies have flapped their empty sails against the mast in inactivity, that you might safely indulge your sport upon the crags!”