“Then, after all,” said Anne, “the mistake is not in what we quiet people call decorous, and proper, and feminine; but only that you, with your high spirits and courage, have the misfortune to be called Marjory, instead of Ralph; that is all; for here, you see, are Miss Aytoun and myself, and all the womankind of Strathoran to back us, who have no ambition whatever to follow the hounds, nor any very particular interest in the leading article. It is merely an individual mistake, Marjory. Acknowledge it.”
“Not I,” exclaimed Miss Falconer; “it is a universal oppression of the sex. They try to reason us down first, these men; and failing that, they laugh us down: they will not be able to accomplish either, one of these days. There! how you turn upon me, with that provoking smile of yours, Anne Ross. What are you thinking of now?”
“Do you remember a little poem—I think of Southey’s,” said Anne, smiling—”about the great wars of Marlbro’ and Prince Eugene, long ago? I was thinking of itsowerword, Marjory—‘What good came of it at last? said little Wilhelmine.’ ”
“Ah, that is just like you,” said Miss Falconer; “coming down upon one with your scraps of poetry, when one is speaking common sense. Oh, you need not raise your eyebrows! I tell you I am speaking quite reasonably and calmly; and we shall see, one day.”
“But, Miss Falconer,” inquired Alice, timidly, “what shall we see?”
“See! Why, a proper equality between men and women, as we were created,” said Miss Falconer, vehemently. “No more bandaging up our minds, as they do the feet of the poor girls in China—oppressing us for their own whims, everywhere! No more shutting us out of our proper share in the management of the world—no more confining us in housekeepers’ rooms and nurseries; to make preserves, and dress babies!”
“Are the babies to be abolished, then?” said Anne. “For pity’s sake, Marjory, do not sentence the poor little things to masculine nurses. Farewell to all music or harmony, then. If we are to dress babies no more, let it be ordained, I pray you, that there shall be no more babies to dress!”
“Nonsense, Anne!” exclaimed Marjory Falconer, loudly; “you want to ridicule all I say. You are content with the bondage—content to be regarded as a piece of furniture, a household drudge, a pretty doll.”
“Hush!” said Anne; “spare me the abjective. I am in no danger of your last evil. And see how Miss Aytoun looks at you.”
“Never mind,” said Miss Falconer; “Miss Aytoun will sympathise with me, I am sure; every true woman must. See how they smile at our opinions—how they sneer at our judgment—‘Oh, it’s only a woman.’ I tell you, Anne Ross, all that will be changed by-and-bye. We shall have equal freedom, equal rights—our own proper dignity and standing in the world.”
“And how will it change our position?” said Anne.
“How obtuse you are! Change our position! Why it will make us free—it will emancipate us—it will——”
“Particulars, particulars, Marjory?”
Miss Falconer paused.
“We shall not be thought unfit any longer to do what men do; our equal mental power and intelligence shall be recognised. We shall have equal rights—we shall be free!”
Anne looked up smiling.
“ ‘And what good came of it at last? said little Wilhelmine.’ ”
Miss Falconer started from her seat in anger, and walked quickly through the room for a moment, Alice looked on in wonder and alarm. At last Marjory approached the table, looked Anne in the face, half smiling, half angry, and replied, in a burst:
“ ‘Nay, that I cannot tell,’ quoth he,But ’twas a glorious victory?’ ”
“ ‘Nay, that I cannot tell,’ quoth he,But ’twas a glorious victory?’ ”
“ ‘Nay, that I cannot tell,’ quoth he,But ’twas a glorious victory?’ ”
Conversation less abstract followed, when Lewis and Ralph joined them; and not long after, Anne and Alice resumed their places in the phaeton, and turned homewards, Lewis riding by their side. Anne’s spirits had wonderfully lightened during their drive,and now she defended Marjory Falconer, almost gaily, against the laughing and half-contemptuous attacks of Lewis.
“Marjory arms all the silly lads in the parish with flippant impertinences about women and their rights, Miss Aytoun,” she said. “I did not mean you, Lewis, so there is no occasion for drowing yourself up. Yet Marjory has some strength, and much kindliness of spirit. And when she has once got rid of those foolish notions, which she will when she has matured a little—”
Anne stopped abruptly. She had noticed before the tall, stooping figure of a woman advancing towards them, and could recognise now, as the passenger approached, the wan face, and wistful, melancholy eyes, which had made so deep an impression upon her imagination, when she saw them on the previous night, looking so sorrowfully on Merkland. A very remarkable face it was, which the stranger now lifted to them, as she passed slowly on, speaking in its emaciated lines of mental struggle more than bodily sickness; and with its strange habitual look of wistful search, as if its eyes had been exercised by constant watching, and had sought about vainly for some hope or gladness never to be found again. Anne met her steadfast, melancholy look for a moment; in another she had passed on.
“What is the matter, Anne?” said Lewis.
Anne drove on awhile, in silence.
“Did you not observe that face?”
“What face? I saw a woman passing, who stared at you, as you did at her; don’t be sentimental, Anne: some shopkeeper’s wife, from Portoran, who has been at the mill. What were you saying of Marjory Falconer? Go on.”
Anne went on.
“She will mature by-and-by, and come out of these follies a sensible woman. You shake your head, Lewis. She will never be of the gentlest; but sensible, and kindly, and vigorous, I believe she will be, one day. There is often some eccentricity about strength, in its development.”
“Hear, hear,” cried Lewis. “Do you observe how Anne turns her periods, Miss Aytoun? Marjory will keep a chair for you, Anne, in some of her feminine colleges, when she has accomplished the rights of women. Moral philosophy! I hope they will give you an LL.D.”
They reached the mill as Lewis spoke. It stood near the spot Mr. Coulter had spoken of “where three lairds’ lands met;” and the burn was intercepted for the uses of the mill, just before it joined its waters to the Oran.
Anne drew up her ponies at the end of the little bridge, which gave access to the miller’s dwelling. Alice had never seen this picturesque corner of the Oran banks, and Anne proposed givingher a glimpse of the bright interior of Mrs. Melder’s pleasant house: she was anxious herself to ask the miller’s wife if she knew anything of the singular stranger, whose appearance had interested her so much.
So Johnnie Halflin scrambled down from his perch behind, to hold Lewis’s horse, much wondering what motive they could have for calling on Mrs. Melder; and Alice lingered on the grassy bank, that sloped down to the riverside, from Mrs. Melder’s door, to ask questions and to admire. The grey mill buildings, and mighty revolving wheel, and rush of foaming water, as the bairn, like some brown mountain urchin, ran, boisterous, from its labors into the placid Oran, giving life and animation to the stream it increased, were worthy of admiration even more genuine than that of Alice, whose little heart was beating very pleasantly, from various causes, which she had not skill, if she had had inclination, to analyze.
But the cottage door was suddenly flung open, a loud scream startled them, and, turning round alarmed, they saw a child flee out, its little frock blazing, its face distorted with pain and fear. Alice screamed, and clung to the arm of Lewis, Lewis called to the boy, and sprang irresolutely forward himself, not knowing what to do; Johnnie Halflin scampered off in terror, holding firmly the bridle of his charge, and the child, blinded with fear, and scorched with pain, flew forward madly. Anne snatched from the carriage a large, rough plaid, threw herself before the little girl, and wrapped it closer round her. The child struggled—Anne pressed the long, wide folds closer and closer round her, extinguishing the flames with her hands. The terrified miller’s wife ran to her assistance—so did Lewis, and at last, very much frightened, and considerably scorched, but with no serious injury, the child was carried into the house, where Alice followed timidly, pressing the small hand of the sufferer within her own, and murmuring kindly words to still its weeping. It was a little girl of some six years, and moaned out its childish lamentations in broken words of some strange, sweet, foreign tongue. The remnants of its burnt dress, too, were not like the ordinary garments of peasant children, and Mrs. Melder herself had no family.
“God be thankit ye were passing by, Miss Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Melder. “I am the silliest body mysel that was ever putten in a strait. Eh! do ye no hear my heart beating?—and the stranger bairn!”
“Whose is it, Mrs. Melder?” asked Anne, as they undressed the moaning child, and laid her on the wooden bed which formed part of the furniture of the homely apartment.
“And that is just what I cannot tell ye, Miss Anne,” said the miller’s wife. “It was left wi’ me by ane—ye wad meet her on the road. She wasna put on like a lady, but she wasna a commonbody either—it was clear to see that. We’ve had a dreary house, Robert and me, since little Bell (ye’ll mind her, Miss Anne?) was ta’en from us, two years syne come Martinmas, and the stranger leddy had heard tell o’t, and thocht, as she said, that I wad be guid to the child—as I will, doubtless, puir, innocent thing!—who could be otherwise?”
“And where did she come from?” inquired Anne, as she assisted in applying some simple remedies.
“The bairn? Na, how can I tell you that Miss Anne, when I dinna ken mysel?”
“No, no; I mean the lady,” said Anne, hurriedly. “I saw her—a very remarkable-looking person she is. Is the child her own?”
“Na; shesaidno, any way,” said Mrs. Melder. “Whaever it belongs to, they think shame o’t, that’s sure. Woes me, Miss Ross! the ill that there is in this world! She has been living at the brig for a day or two back, and the bairn wi’ her. I am doubtful it was but a foolish thing, taking a bairn when one kens nought of its kindred. But the house was dreary. Where there has been a babe in a dwelling, it makes great odds when the light of its bit countenance is lifted away, and my heart warmed to the puir wee thing, sent out from its own bluid. So I took it, ye see, Miss Ross, and Robert he didna oppose. It’s to bide two years—if we’re all spared as long—and the stipend for it is twenty pound, and the siller’s lying in Mr. Foreman the writer’s hands—so we canna come to any loss. It’s an uncommon bairn a’thegither o’t, and speaks in a tongue neither Robert nor me can make onything of. It maun have come from some far part—was ye speaking, my lamb?”
Anne beckoned Lewis forward as the child murmured again some incoherent words.
“What language is it?—I do not recognize the tongue.”
“It is Spanish,” said Lewis. “Strange! Where did the child come from, Mrs. Melder?”
The miller’s wife repeated her story, and, promising to call at the house of the doctor on their way homeward, and send him up to the little patient, her visitors left her, and proceeded on their way, disturbed by no further incident, except in Anne’s mind, by the strange excitement of interest with which this story moved her. She could not banish the stranger’s pale face from her mind, nor forget the pitiful look of the little child, in whose soft features she thought she could trace some resemblance, moaning out its feeble complaint in that strange language, uncomprehended, and alone.
THESEdays passed on in suspense and anxiety to Mrs. Catherine. Uncertain what to believe or disbelieve, concerning the young man in whose fortunes she was so deeply interested, her strong spirit chafed and struggled in its compulsory inactivity. Nor did Lewis’s report of Mrs. Duncombe’s friends, in any degree still her anxiety. Fashionable ladies stood low in Mrs. Catherine’s opinion at all times; and her strong nationality aggravated tenfold her dislike to fashionable ladies in Paris—French or semi-French. Had it not been for Alice, Mrs. Catherine herself would have been on her way to Paris ere now. But unwilling to send the girl abruptly home, and riveted besides by a hundred little ties, which made her absence from the Tower (she had not left it since her sorrowful journey, thirty years’ ago, from Sholto’s island grave) seem an impossibility; she waited—we are constrained to admit, not patiently—for further tidings, inclined to hope sometimes that Mr. Foreman’s benevolent surmise might be well-founded; and anon, cast down, and venting her grief in a show of bitter indignation at “the prodigal that could sell his birthright.”
Many solitary hours were spent during that anxious fortnight (for mails travelled tardily thirty years ago) in the little room—and many wrestlings of secret, silent prayer these narrow walls were witness to. Jacky, gliding hither and thither in her elfin ubiquity, could hear Mrs. Catherine’s step shake the floor; and listened in tremulous awe and reverence sometimes to those often-repeated words, the burden of Mrs. Catherine’s anxiety: “Isabel Balfour’s one son—that might have beenyourfirstborn, Sholto Douglas!” But Jacky, with a sentiment of honor peculiar to herself, kept her knowledge of Mrs. Catherine’s trouble, jealously within her own mind, and in the intervals of her heterogeneous occupations, and no less heterogeneous studies, wove dreams of that young Laird of Strathoran, over whom Mrs. Catherine prayed and mourned—and creating for his especial service, some such wondrous vassal as the Genii of Aladdin, conjured Sholto Douglas back to life and lands again, and made the prodigal his heir and son.
Little Bessie, Alice Aytoun’s maid, did not know what to make of that strange, thin, angular girl, with her dark keen face, and eccentric motions, and singular language. Bessie, plump, rosy and good-humored, looked on in wondering silence as Jacky sat on the carpet in the library, bent almost double over some mighty old volume from those heavy and well-filled shelves—was inclined to laugh sometimes, yet checking herself in mysterious reverence, revolvedin her mind the possibility of Mrs. Catherine’s frequent epithet “you elf”—having in it some shadow of truth. Bessie had read fairy tales in her day, and knew that in these authentic histories there were such things as changelings—could this strange Jacky be one? The flying footsteps, and bold leaps and climbings, which Bessie did not venture to emulate, gave some color to the supposition, so did these out-of-the-way studies and singular expressions; but Jacky withal was not malicious, nor evil-tempered, and Bessie paused before condemning her. On consulting Johnnie Halflin on the subject, she found him as much puzzled as herself.
“For ye see,” said Johnnie, “she was never at the schule—and look till her reading! I was three—four year at it mysel, the haill winter; for ye ken in this part, Bessie, it’s no’ like a toun—there’s the beasts to herd all the summer and other turns, till the shearing’s by; but I wad rather hae a day’s kemping with that illwilly nowt that winna bide out o’ the corn, than sit down to the books wi’ Jacky. She kens best herself where she learnt it.”
“And look how she speaks,” ejaculated Bessie.
“Speaks! ye have not heard her get to her English—it’s like listening to the leddies. No Mrs. Catherine ye see, for one canna think what wordsshesays—ye just ken when ye hear her, that ye maun do what ye’re bidden in a moment; but Jacky! ye would think she got it a’ out of books—whiles, when ye anger her—”
“Eh, Johnnie! yonder she is, coming fleeing down the hill,” cried little Bessie in alarm, as a flying figure paused on a ridge of the steep eminence above them, and drew itself back for a final race to the bottom. “Look! ye would think she never touched the ground.”
“Whist, whist,” said Johnnie, apprehensively, “she can hear ony sound about the place, as quick as Oscar, and Oscar’s the best watch in the parish—be quiet, Bessie.”
The youthful gossips were standing, during their gloaming hour of leisure, at the back of a knot of outhouses, barns, and stables, and Jacky came sweeping down upon them out of breath.
“Are you there, Johnnie Halflin? is that you, Bessie? Has my mother been in the barn yet?—whisht, there she’s speaking.”
“No, it’s Jean,” said the lad; “the cow’s better, and Jean said she would never let on there had been onything the matter wi’t, or else the puir beast would be killed wi’ physic. Ye needna tell on her, Jacky—ye wadna like to harm a bonnie cow like yon, yoursel.”
“And we’ll no’ tell on you,” added Bessie.
“I’m no caring,” was the quick response, “whether ye tell on me or no—only if you do, Bessie, I’ll never be friends with ye again; and if you do, Johnnie, ye’ll catch grief. Guess where I’ve been.”
“Scooring ower the hills on a heather besom,” said Johnnie, “seeking the fairies—they say ye’re one yoursel.”
A sweep of Jacky’s energetic arm sent Johnnie staggering down the path.
“I have been down at Robert Melder’s mill, and there’s a bairn there—a little girl—Bessie, ye never saw the like of it!”
“Is’t a’ dressed in green, and riding on a white powny?” said Mrs. Catherine’s youthful servingman, returning to the charge.
“Ye’re a fuil,” retorted Jacky, flushing indignantly, “how do the like of you ken what’s true and what’s a fable? There was a lady once, that led a lion in her hand—youdinna ken what that means—and if there were gentle spirits lang syne in the air, what do you ken about them? Bessie, come with me the morn, and see the little bairn. I like to hear her speak; she says words like what you hear in dreams.”
Jacky’s companions indulged in a smothered laugh.
“Has she wings?” asked the lad.
“I will throw ye into the Oran, Johnnie Halflin,” cried Jacky, in wrath; “if ye do not hold your peace in a minute. Miss Anne saved her life, and she speaks a strange language that naebody kens; and she’s from a strange country; and she’s like—”
“Oh, I saw her mysel,” interrupted Johnnie, “a bit wee smout, wi’ her frock burning—saved her life! how grand we’re speaking! I could have done’t mysel, a’ that Miss Anne did, and made nae work about it—only I had Merkland’s horse to haud.”
“I have seen a face like it,” said Jacky, thoughtfully, “a’ but the eyes.”
“Eh, and isna Mr. Ross a fine young gentleman?” said little Bessie. Bessie was glad to seize upon the first tangible point.
“How would ye like to bide constant in Strathoran, Bessie,” said Johnnie Halflin, “down bye at Merkland? Eh, disna Mr. Lewis gie weary looks up at the easter tower?”
Bessie bridled, and drew herself up with pleased consciousness, as her mistress’s representative.
“I wonder at ye, Johnnie! how can ye speak such nonsense?”
“Is’t Miss Aytoun Mr. Lewis looks up for?” inquired Jacky.
Her companions answered with a laugh.
“I think,” said the boy, “for my ain part, that there’s not a young leddy in a’ Strathoran like Miss Aytoun. She’s out-o’-sight bonnier than Miss Anne.”
Jacky pushed him indignantly away.
“A fine judge you are. Like a big turnip your ain sel. A clumsy Swede, like what they give to the kye. But, Bessie, do you think Mr. Lewis is in—” Jacky hesitated, her own singular romance making it sacrilege to speak the usual word in presenceof those ruder comrades: “do ye think Mr. LewislikesMiss Alice? he’s no courting her?”
Bessie smiled, blushed, and looked dignified.
“O, Jacky, how do I ken?”
“Does Miss Alice likehim?”
“Jacky, what a question! Miss Alice disna tell me.”
Jacky looked at her inquisitively, and finishing her share of the conversation in her own abrupt fashion, shot into the byre to see the ailing cow, from whence she soon after stole into the Tower, where an irksome hour of compulsory stocking-knitting, in the comfortable housekeeper’s-room of Mrs. Euphan Morison, awaited Mrs. Euphan’s reluctant daughter. The room was a very cosy room in all things, but its disagreeable odor of dried and drying herbs; and Jacky, after a reproof from her mother, so habitual that it had sunk into a formula, took her customary seat and work. Bessie joined her, by-and-bye, with some little piece of sewing that she had to do for Miss Aytoun, and Johnnie Halflin, less dignified, betook himself to the kitchen fire, to read, or joke, or doze the evening out.
The time drew near when Mrs. Catherine’s doubts concerning Archibald Sutherland were to be solved. The strong old lady grew nervous on these dim mornings, and opened her letter-bag with a tremor in her hand; but when the latest day had come, there was still no letter from Paris. Impatiently she tossed them out. There were two or three letters of applicants for her vacant farm, the closely-written sheet of home-news for Alice, business-notes of various kinds, but nothing from the prodigal, whose interests lay so near her heart. She lifted them all separately again, turned out the bag—in vain. Her clear eye had made no blunder in its first quick investigation. Mrs. Catherine’s brow darkened. Alice hardly dared to approach timidly, and withdraw her own letter from the little heap. Not that the face of her kinswoman expressed anger, but it bore the impress of some unknown mental struggle, which Alice, in the serene light of her girlish happiness, did not even know by name.
So Alice stole up stairs to the fireside of her bright dressing-room, to read the long mother’s letter, overflowing with tender counsel and affection, and to weave fair dreams—dreams of joy and honor to that gentle mother, and all things pleasant and prosperous to James—round one unacknowledged centre of her own. Pleasant are those bright dream-mists of youthful reverie, with their vague fairy-land of gladness—pleasant to weave their tinted web, indefinitely rich and glorious, over that universe of golden air, with its long withdrawing vistas—the wealthy future of youth.
But Mrs. Catherine sat still alone, her head bent forward, her keen eyes looking into the blank depths of a mirror on the wall, asthough, like the hapless lady in the tale, she could read the wished-for tidings there. The door opened slowly. Jacky, with some strange intuitive knowledge of her mistress’s anxiety, had been on the outlook from the window of the west room, and had now glided down stairs to report. Mrs. Catherine raised her head sharply as the girl’s prefatory “If you please!” fell on her ear.
“What ist’, you elf?”
“If you please,” continued Jacky, “it’s Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, gallopping up the waterside like to break his neck!”
Mrs. Catherine started to her feet.
“Take him to the library—I will be down myself in a moment. Are you lingering, you fairy? Away with you!”
Jacky vanished, and Mrs. Catherine walked hastily through the room.
“He will have gotten tidings!” And then she was still for a moment, in communion with One mightier than man, nerving herself for the “tidings,” whatever they might be.
Jacky stood at the open door as Mr. Ferguson gallopped up, but he did notice the unusual haste with which he was hurried into the library. A cold dew was on his honest forehead; regret and grief were in his kindly heart; the familiar ordinary things about him bore a strange look of change. The difference was in his own agitated eyes, but he did not think of that. Mrs. Catherine stood before him, calm and stern, in the library.
“Mr. Ferguson, you have gotten tidings?”
The firm, strong figure reeled in Mr. Ferguson’s dizzy eyes.
“Mr. Ferguson, you are troubled. Has the prodigal done his worst? Sit down and calm yourself. I am waiting to hear?”
The factor sat down. Mrs. Catherine did not, but, clasping her hands tightly together, stood before him and waited.
“I have bad news, Mrs. Catherine,” said Mr. Ferguson; “worse news, a hundred times, than ever I suspected—than ever you could expect. Strathoran is fallen—ruined! No hope—no possibility of saving him! It is all over!” And the strong man groaned.
“How and wherefore?” said Mrs. Catherine, sternly.
“He has sold his estate—parted with his home and his land to some titled sharper in Paris. Sold! he has done worse—still more dishonorable and fatal than that, he hasgambledit away; what his father spent years to redeem, and set freefor him, he has staked on the chances of a game. Bear with me, Mrs. Catherine, if I speak bitterly. The young man has disappointed all my hopes—ruined himself—what will become of him?”
Mrs. Catherine stood with her head bowed down, but otherwise firmly erect, and silent.
“What will he do?” repeated the distressed factor, “what can he do? land and name, fortune and character, all lost. What hashe left, as he says, but despair—with his prospects too, his fair beginning. O, it is enough to make a man distracted! What have they done, that unhappy race, that they should be constantly thus—father and son, a wise man and a prodigal, the one wasting his substance and his inheritance, the other denying himself the lawful pleasures of a just life to win it back again.”
“Comfort yourself, Robert Ferguson,” said Mrs. Catherine, bitterly, as drawing forward a chair with emphatic rapidity, she seated herself at the table, “there will be no son of the name again to waste years in building up the house of Strathoran: their history has come to an end—fitly ended in a rioter and a prodigal.”
The factor looked up deprecatingly, the very words which his excitement brought to his own lips, sounding harsh from another’s.
“Mrs. Catherine, Mr. Archibald is young. When other lads were leaving school or entering college, he was launched upon the world his own master, with a great income and a large estate.—You know how easily the light spirit of youth is moved, but you cannot know how the way of a young man is hedged in with temptations—Mrs. Catherine!” the factor raised his hand in appeal.
“Speak not to me,” said Mrs. Catherine, “I know! yes truly, I know more than you think, or give me credit for. Temptations! and what is obedience that has never been tried, or strength that has not been exercised in needful resistance? I bid ye listen to me, Robert Ferguson—was there not a test appointed in Eden? and would you set youself to say that the fool of a woman (that I should say so, who am of her lineage and blood!) might be justified for her ill-doing, because the fruit hung fair upon the tree, and tempted the wandering eye of her? Think better of my judgment and bring no such pleas to me.”
“What can I bring? What can I say?” said Mr. Ferguson, in a low voice. “Is he to be left to live or die, as he best can, in yon strange country? Are we to let him sink into a professional gamester, like the men who have ruined him? I speak wildly.—He would never do that. I myself must seek, in some other place, a livelihood for my family; and I will get it; for my work is clear before me, and it is known that I can do what I undertake; but for him, Mrs. Catherine, with no friend in this wide world but yourself, who can give him efficient help—with not an acre but these poor lands of Loelyin and Lochend, which are still entailed; and, worse than all that, with his best years lost, his principles unsettled, and a stain upon his name—what is to become of him?”
“He will drink the beverage he has brewed,” said Mrs. Catherine, harshly. “He will have the reward of the waster, as I have told you before now. Let him take his wages—let him want now, as he has sinfully wasted. It is his righteous hire and reward.”
“And you can see that, can think of that, and not stretch out a hand to him?” cried the factor, nervously, as he rose from his chair. “Except my hand and my head, Mrs. Catherine Douglas, I have no inheritance; and your estate yields gold to you, greater every year; but, before I see want come to Strathoran’s son, I will labor night and day. The professions are open to him yet.—His mother’s uncle was a Lord of Session; his father’s cousin was the greatest physician in Edinburgh. I bid you good morning, Mrs. Catherine. I have to write to Mr. Archibald, without loss of time.”
“Sit down upon your seat, this moment,” said Mrs. Catherine, authoritatively, “and do not speak to me like a fool, Robert Ferguson. Let me hear Archie Sutherland’s story, the worst and the best of it; and spend a pound of your own siller on the rioter, at your peril! As if I did not know one lad at the college was enough for any man. Sit down upon your seat, and tell me the whole story, as I bid you, this moment; or I vow to you, that your young advocate, if he had his gown the morn, shall get no pleas of mine!”
Mr. Ferguson sat down, well pleased, and taking out a letter, laid it silently before Mrs. Catherine. The letter was long, blurred, uneven, and written, as it seemed, in hurried intervals, with breaks and incoherent dashes of the pen between. It was not either very clear or very coherent; but it told how rent and distracted the writer’s heart and spirit were, and what a ceaseless struggle raged and contended there. The large soft folds of Mrs. Catherine’s shawl shook as if a wind had stirred them, but she did not speak; the moisture gathered thick beneath her large eyelid, but was not shed, for Mrs. Catherine was not given to tears. At last she closed the letter carefully, occupying much more time in the operation than was necessary, and endeavored to assume her former caustic tone to hide her graver emotions. “A fine story to come to a gentlewoman withal! well, Mr. Ferguson, and what is it your purpose that I should do for your rioter?”
“I do not know—I have not been able to think,” said the factor, himself moved even to weeping: “that something must be done, and that immediately, is clear. If I had not been coming to you for assistance, Mrs. Catherine, I should have come for advice, for how to proceed I cannot see.”
There was a considerable pause—at length, Mrs. Catherine started from her seat and resumed her quick pacing of the room.
“Wherefore are we losing time—send a message home, to Woodsmuir to bid them put up a change of apparel for you; ride into Portoran and get what siller will be needful—do not be scrupulous—and go your ways this very day, or, if it be too far spent, atthe latest the morn, to the prodigal. I would go myself, but the witless youth, as I see by his letter, is feared for me, and you can maybe travel with less delay. Bring him home. Strathoran can shelter him no longer, but the dwelling-place of Sholto Douglas can never be closed upon Isabel Balfour’s son. I say to you, lose no time, Robert Ferguson.” Mrs. Catherine rang the bell energetically. “Write to your wife about the needful raiment. Archie Sutherland has slept in young Robert’s cradle. She will not grudge the trouble.”
Mr. Ferguson did not wait to reflect, but with all speed, drew paper and ink towards him and began to write.
“Let Andrew or Johnnie be ready in a moment to ride to Woodsmuir,” said Mrs. Catherine, as Jacky appeared at the door; “and tell your mother to send in refreshments for Mr. Ferguson. Begone, you imp—what are you waiting for?”
“If you please,” said Jacky, “it’s Mr. Foreman himsel in the gig—will I bring him in?” and, without waiting for an answer, the girl disappeared.
“Mr. Foreman himself,” repeated Mrs. Catherine. “What new trouble is coming now?—they are ever in troops.”
Mr. Ferguson raised his head uneasily and paused in his writing. The excited curiosity of both suggesting some further aggravation of the great misfortunes they already knew.
Mr. Foreman entered the room gravely, and with care in his face—greeted Mrs. Catherine in silence, and starting, when he saw Mr. Ferguson, asked; “It is true, then?”
“True?—Ay, beyond doubt or hoping,” said Mrs. Catherine, bitterly. “The prodigal has made an end of his house and name. I was right, Mr. Foreman, and you were wrong. The hairy fool had been sent on no less an errand than to see the value of the prey. Grant me patience!—how am I to see daily before me, some evil animal, such as could herd with cattle like you, reigning in the house of the Sutherlands?”
“How have you heard, Mr. Foreman?” said the factor, anxiously. “Has Mr. Archibald written to you himself?”
“No,” said Mr. Foreman, “I have got my information from a most disagreeable source. I received a letter to-day from the solicitors of Lord Gillravidge, touching the conveyance of the property. Have you the intelligence direct from Mr. Sutherland? I came up immediately to let Mrs. Catherine know.”
“I have a letter,” said Mr. Ferguson. “It is indeed all over. He has lost everything except the entailed lands of Loelyin and Lochend, and the farm of Woodsmuir, upon which my own house stands, and it, you know, is mortgaged to its full value. All the rest is gone. Mr. Archibald is ruined.”
There was a pause again, broken only by the sound of Mrs.Catherine’s footsteps, as she walked heavily through the room.—These grave, kind men, Archibald Sutherland’s factor and agent, who had known him all his life, were almost as deeply affected with his sin and misfortune as though he had been an erring son. Mr. Foreman broke the silence by asking:
“What do you intend to do?”
“Mrs. Catherine advises me to start immediately for Paris,” said Mr. Ferguson. “We all of us know how bitterly Mr. Archibald will reproach himself, now that all self-reproach is unavailing. I will endeavor to bring him home—to the Tower, I mean; and then—I do not well know what we are to do. But we must try to rouse his mind (it is a vigorous one, if it were but in a purer atmosphere,) to shape out for itself another course. I was about to ride into Portoran to make immediate preparation for my journey.”
“Your letter, Mr. Ferguson,” said Mrs. Catherine, as Jacky again appeared at the door. “Let Andrew—is it Andrew?—lose no time! Here, you elf! Have you anything else to advise, Mr. Foreman? I myself would start in a moment, but that I think Mr. Ferguson would do it better. The lad’s spirit is broken, doubtless, and I might be over harsh upon him. Give me Archie’s letter.”
Mrs. Catherine’s large grey eyelid swelled full again, and she seated herself at the table.
“I have nothing else to advise,” said Mr. Foreman, abstractedly. “I think it is very wise, and you should start at once, Mr. Ferguson. But—” The lawyer paused. “Is it not possible to do anything? Could no compromise be made? Better mortgage the land (it was mortgaged heavily enough in his grandfather’s time—I remember how old Strathoran was hampered by paying them off,) than suffer it to pass altogether out of his hands. Could nothing be done? Mrs. Catherine, if such an arrangement were possible, would you not lend your assistance?”
Mrs. Catherine raised her eyes from the letter.
“To what end or purpose? That he might have the freedom of losing the land again, if it were won back to him by the spending of other folks’ substance? George Foreman, it is not like your wisdom to think of such a thing. A penniless laird—a shadow, and no substance—with a false rank to keep up, and nothing coming in to keep it up withal? I will not hear of it! Gentlemen, I have made up my mind; out of yon hot unnatural air of artificial ill, the lad must come down to the cold blast of poverty, if he is ever to be anything but a silken fule, spending gear unjustly gotten, in an unlawful way. I say I will have no hand in giving back plenty and ease to Archie Sutherland, till he has righteously wrought and struggled for the same. Bring himback to my house, Robert Ferguson. He has lost the home and the lands of his fathers. Let him see them in the hands of an alien, and then let him gird his loins to a right warfare, and win them back again. With God’s blessing, and man’s labor, there is nought in this world impossible. I hope to live to see him win back his possessions, as I have seen him lose them. If he does not, he deserves them not.”
“Write to him so,” said Mr. Ferguson, eagerly. “It is the spur he needs. Let me have a letter, so hopeful and encouraging, to carry with me, Mrs. Catherine. Mere reproach would do evil, and not good. You are perfectly right. A struggle—a warfare—that is the true prescription. Write to Mr. Archibald yourself—it will have more effect than anything I can say.”
Mr. Foreman sighed, and felt almost inclined to withdraw his adherence from those reformers who aim at the abolition of entails. At length, and slowly, he signified his consent.
“Yes—yes: Mrs. Catherine is right. I believe it is the wisest way. But—”
Mr. Foreman paused again. A strange master in Strathoran—the kindly union of the country broken in upon by one who, if they judged rightly, had done grievous ill to Archibald Sutherland. A painful film came over the lawyer’s eyes. It seemed like treason to the trust reposed in him by “Old Strathoran” thus to suffer his son’s downfall.
“You are losing time,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Robert Ferguson, the day is wearing on. Ye will not be able to leave Portoran the night. Start with the first coach the morn’s morning. Do not tarry a moment. Mind how long the days will be to a spirit in despair; and come to me when you are returning from Portoran if there is time. I will write to the unhappy lad.”
Thus dismissed, both gentlemen took their leave, the factor receiving a parting adjuration to “take sufficient siller—be not scrimpit. Ye will have many charges in so long a journey; and, as I have said, Robert Ferguson, lay out a pound of your own siller upon this dyvour at your proper peril! I will visit your iniquity upon the head of your young advocate, if ye venture to do such a thing.—Mind!”
Mrs. Catherine seated herself at her library table as the factor and the lawyer rode away together, and began to write to Archibald Sutherland—a hurried letter, swiftly written. It ran thus:
“I have heard of your transgression and calamity, Archibald Sutherland, and write as I need not tell you, in sore grief. Nevertheless, I have neither time nor leisure to record my lamentations, nor do I think that tears from old e’en—the which are bitter in the shedding—are things to make merchandise of for the mending ofyoung backsliders. At this moment, I have other matters in hand. I see by your letter to Mr. Ferguson (a better man than I fear you will ever be), that you are yourself cast down, and in grief, as it is meet you should be. See that it be for the sin, and not for the mere carnal consequences, and so there will be the better chance for a blessing on your repentance.“And boy, rise up and come back to the country that brought you forth, out of that den of sin and iniquity. The house of your fathers is open to you no longer—the house of Sholto Douglas can never be shut upon Isabel Balfour’s son. Come back to me—you shall not be my heir, for the lands of my fathers must descend to none that cannot keep them firmly, and guide them well; but whatsoever is needful for you to begin your warfare, lies ready for your claiming. I say your warfare, Archie Sutherland, for I bid you not come home to dally through an idle life or waste more days.—Come home to fight for your possessions back again—come home to strive in every honorable and lawful way to win back the good land you have lost—come home, I say, Archie Sutherland, to redeem your inheritance by honest labor, and establish your house again, as it was established by the first Sutherland that set foot on Oranside. The road is clear before you. You have gotten all the siller wasted now that you can get to waste. I command you, as there is anything in this life you set a value on, to throw these evil things behind you, and gird yourself for a warfare—a warfare that will be neither light nor brief, but that will be—what your past life has not been—just and honorable, a work for a man, not a witless and sinful dalliance for a silly youth, a play for a fevered bairn.“I have a burden of years upon me as you know, and may have but a small distance between me and the kirkyard of Strathoran, therefore I lay my charge upon you to be speedy with your labor. My kin and youthful neighbors are round about me, Archie Sutherland, (all but Sholto my one brother, that I left lying in the cold earth of a strange country,) but they are dwelling in silent cities, where no living thing can tarry. Boy! let me see hope breaking upon you, before I lay down my head beside them. My time is short. Turn to this work, Archie Sutherland, that I may carry better tidings with me, to your father and your mother, in the good land where they are resting from their labor. To your warfare I command you, young man, that I may see your prosperity as I have seen your down-come. Come home to the house of your mother’s oldest friend, come home without delay (and I charge you that what honor remains to your name may be preserved—to bring home to me that wilful girl, your sister Isabel) to your just work, that I may not go down with a sore heart to my last dwelling-place.“Catherine Douglas.”
“I have heard of your transgression and calamity, Archibald Sutherland, and write as I need not tell you, in sore grief. Nevertheless, I have neither time nor leisure to record my lamentations, nor do I think that tears from old e’en—the which are bitter in the shedding—are things to make merchandise of for the mending ofyoung backsliders. At this moment, I have other matters in hand. I see by your letter to Mr. Ferguson (a better man than I fear you will ever be), that you are yourself cast down, and in grief, as it is meet you should be. See that it be for the sin, and not for the mere carnal consequences, and so there will be the better chance for a blessing on your repentance.
“And boy, rise up and come back to the country that brought you forth, out of that den of sin and iniquity. The house of your fathers is open to you no longer—the house of Sholto Douglas can never be shut upon Isabel Balfour’s son. Come back to me—you shall not be my heir, for the lands of my fathers must descend to none that cannot keep them firmly, and guide them well; but whatsoever is needful for you to begin your warfare, lies ready for your claiming. I say your warfare, Archie Sutherland, for I bid you not come home to dally through an idle life or waste more days.—Come home to fight for your possessions back again—come home to strive in every honorable and lawful way to win back the good land you have lost—come home, I say, Archie Sutherland, to redeem your inheritance by honest labor, and establish your house again, as it was established by the first Sutherland that set foot on Oranside. The road is clear before you. You have gotten all the siller wasted now that you can get to waste. I command you, as there is anything in this life you set a value on, to throw these evil things behind you, and gird yourself for a warfare—a warfare that will be neither light nor brief, but that will be—what your past life has not been—just and honorable, a work for a man, not a witless and sinful dalliance for a silly youth, a play for a fevered bairn.
“I have a burden of years upon me as you know, and may have but a small distance between me and the kirkyard of Strathoran, therefore I lay my charge upon you to be speedy with your labor. My kin and youthful neighbors are round about me, Archie Sutherland, (all but Sholto my one brother, that I left lying in the cold earth of a strange country,) but they are dwelling in silent cities, where no living thing can tarry. Boy! let me see hope breaking upon you, before I lay down my head beside them. My time is short. Turn to this work, Archie Sutherland, that I may carry better tidings with me, to your father and your mother, in the good land where they are resting from their labor. To your warfare I command you, young man, that I may see your prosperity as I have seen your down-come. Come home to the house of your mother’s oldest friend, come home without delay (and I charge you that what honor remains to your name may be preserved—to bring home to me that wilful girl, your sister Isabel) to your just work, that I may not go down with a sore heart to my last dwelling-place.
“Catherine Douglas.”
Mr. Ferguson returned to the Tower on his way to Woodsmuir, and received this letter, with many messages and charges besides, especially addressed to Isabel Sutherland, whom Mrs. Catherine, in the excitement of her grief for Archibald, had almost forgotten. Mr. Ferguson was to leave Portoran with the night-coach for Edinburgh; and, again, the perforce quietude of waiting fell upon the aged lady of the Tower.
OTHERtwo weary slow-paced weeks wore through, before Mrs. Catherine heard any further tidings of her prodigal. At last Mr. Ferguson’s hurried intimation of his arrival in Paris came at once to satisfy and to stimulate her anxiety—for Mr. Ferguson’s brief epistle said emphatically that it waswellhe had lost no time in setting out upon his journey, and that he found “Mr. Archibald” in sorest need of some steadfast friend about him. A few days after there came a more explicit letter. Mr. Ferguson had found poor Archibald Sutherland in the strong grip of despair. Loss of fortune had brought loss of friends—not one of all his former guests or flatterers remained to comfort him in his poverty; and save for the jealous solicitude with which he guarded his sister, Mr. Ferguson believed that his reckless desperation would have laid him ere now in the grave of the suicide. But Isabel, wilful, impetuous and admired as she was, bound her fierce guardian to his hated life—still courted in these gay circles, for the wit and beauty which all this burden of calamity could not diminish, the ruined man stalked by her side everywhere, like some intruding spectre, casting a blight upon the smiles that woke no congenial sunshine in his ghostly face. The treachery which he had felt surrounding himself—the warning of Mrs. Catherine’s letters had awakened him to a wild anxiety for Isabel: he could not bear her absence from him. Regardless of sneers and inuendos—regardless of contempt and indifference, he followed his sister wherever she went, and scowled away from her in his gaunt pride and anger, whosoever ventured upon any show of admiration. But no human spirit could bear that fierce tension long; and when his factor’s home face looked in upon him, so clear, upright, and manlike, with all its respectful kindliness of sympathy, the heart of Archibald Sutherland burst from its compulsory hardihood, and melted into very weakness. None knew or could appreciate better than he, the thoroughly honorable character of Mr. Ferguson—none betterknew the warm kindliness of that pleasant home of Woodsmuir, which the factor had left for the discomforts of a long journey and a strange country, to aid and succorhim—him, the prodigal, the destroyer of his father’s house. Tears, strange to the eyes of the broken man, fell copiously over Mrs. Catherine’s letter—a time of strange incoherence followed, and when Mr. Ferguson wrote again, it was from the sick room where Archibald Sutherland lay, prostrate in body and mind, in the wild heat of fever, struggling for his life.
Mr. Ferguson wrote with unwonted pathos of that strange phantom of terror for Isabel, which haunted his patient’s mind by night and day—the one consistent thread through all that delirious chaos—of how the wilful sister in the pride of her wit and beauty heard it first from her brother’s raving lips with indignant anger, haughtily blaming the manly watcher by that brother’s bedside whose place she did not offer to take; but how, at last, the “weeping blood of woman’s breast” was reached by that wail of agony, and Isabel gave up her gaieties, and took her place in the sick room, soothing the sufferer by her very presence. But Mr. Ferguson did not tell, how unweariedly he himself watched by that bed of fever, and when doctor and attendant despaired, still hoped against hope—nor how, when feeble, and pale, and worn out, the convalescent could raise his head again, it was the strong arm of his Strathoran factor that held him up—it was the kindly tongue of home that gave thanks for his recovery.
But long weeks had lengthened into months during Archibald’s illness, and the dark short days of December were rising, in their chill alternations of frost and rain, upon the northern skies of Strathoran, when Mr. Ferguson returned home. He came alone, for Captain Duncombe had joined his wife and brother-in-law in Paris, and was to be their escort to England. Captain Duncombe had got a considerable accession of fortune, by the death of some friend, during the time of Archibald’s convalescence, and had managed to effect an exchange into a regiment stationed near London, whither his wife had no objection to accompany him. The saturnine Captain was something touched by his hapless brother-in-law’s emaciated appearance, and had no objection to travel leisurely home for his convenience, though protesting many times, with unnecessary fervor, that, when once at home, he could do nothing for him; and Mr. Ferguson, whose own affairs imperatively called for his presence, and whose strength had been wasted by long confinement, reluctantly left his patient, and returned to Strathoran alone.
In the meantime, changes had taken place there: bevies of English sportsmen had arrived with Lord Gillravidge at his newly acquired property—gamekeepers and grooms, a whole village full,overbrimmed its quiet precincts. Rough Ralph Falconer, condescendingly noticed at first, in acknowledgment of his kindred pursuits, was shrinking from the neighborhood already fairly over-crowed and put down, endeavoring to hide his mortification under bitter laughter. Bitterly upon them, “pilgarlic dandies,” “hairy fuils,” “idle cattle,” poured the full flood of Mrs. Catherine’s derision. The countryside was stirred with unwonted excitement. An Englishman, alien to their blood, and contemptuous of their Church—the supplanter, besides, of an old and long established family, in a district peculiarly tenacious of hereditary loves and hatreds,—the new Lord of Strathoran had all the strongest feelings of his neighbors arrayed against him.
The new Lord of Strathoran was supremely indifferent. The countryside and its likings and dislikings, were not of the remotest consequence to him.
And little Alice Aytoun was beginning to receive gentle and tender hints from Edinburgh, that the original limits proposed for her visit, had been considerably overpassed. She had forgotten, in the unconscious selfishness of a light heart, how lonely the Edinburgh parlor would be, during the long days which her mother spent there alone—for Alice’sentreeinto the festivities and party-givings of that quiet district, which her inexperience called “the world,” had been a triumph—and with so much homage laid at her little feet, and so much girlish delight and laughing wonder, in receiving that strange, new tribute of admiration, it was scarcely wonderful that the Edinburgh parlor, with its quiet dwelling at home, and brief domestic circle, seemed almost sombre in the contrast. It was arranged, however, that Alice should return home after the new year, and, her conscience eased of some compunctions it had, respecting neglect of her mother, Alice looked forward to the especial merry-makings of that blythe season with a light heart.
Meanwhile, Anne Ross’s ingenuity was vainly exercised in devising expedients to occupy her brother, and divert him from those frequent visits which it had become his pleasure to pay at the Tower. Lewis found numberless errands—alleged consultations with Mrs. Catherine, at which his mother fumed silently in sullen dignity—pretences for advising with the shrewd factotum of Mrs. Catherine’s finely-cultivated home-farm, concerning those fields immediately adjoining Merkland which Mr. Coulter advised, putting on some scientific regimen—or even a rare fungus, or delicate moss to show to Miss Aytoun, who began to be interested in that beautiful science of botany which Lewis himself had taken up so suddenly.
These visits, and the too certain end to which they tended, pained Anne deeply, overpowered her, indeed, sometimes with sickbewilderment, the more that in the present state of matters, she was perfectly powerless. Any step of her’s might precipitate Lewis, so jealously alive to interference as he was, and make that certain, which was now only feared and deprecated, so Anne, like her friend in the Tower, had to wait perforce for the regular course of events, and with an anxiety still more intense and painful than Mrs. Catherine’s. What but woe and mishap could come from this unhappy intercourse? What but pain and disappointment and sorrow to these two youthful hearts.
Anne could perceive that it annoyed her step-mother; that Mrs. Ross, with her overweening partiality for, and pride in her only son, was inclined to take his attention to Alice Aytoun as a personal slight and injury to herself. But it was not because a connection so terrible existed between the families already—Alice had no friends to elevate the standing, nor portion to increase the wealth of her future partner, and therefore Mrs. Ross frowned upon the growing devotion of Lewis, and already, in many a peevish altercation and sarcastic allusion, had brought in Alice Aytoun’s name—fanning thereby the flame which she hoped to extinguish.
And during these months, the little girl, so strangely brought to Oran Mill, was learning the tongue of her new home rapidly. A strange junction, the liquid Spanish, which fell on Jacky’s visionary ear so pleasantly, “like the words folk hear in dreams,” made, mingled with these soft syllables of the homely, Scottish tongue, broken from what harshness soever might originally be in them, by the child’s voice of lisping music. Mrs. Melder had been told to call her Lilias, and affection had already contracted the name into the familiar diminutive of “Lilie.” A strange exotic lily the child seemed with her small, pale features and olive-tinted cheek, and flood of dusky silken hair, and she had become already a wonder in the parish.
Mrs. Coulter sent for the miller’s wife on some small pretext of business, that she might see her little lodger, and Lilie returned from Harrows laden with fruit, and toys, and sweetmeats, and leaving little Harry Coulter, the agriculturist’s Benjamin, struggling with desperate energy to follow her, and hopelessly in love. Lilie had even been taken to the Tower, and half smothered with caresses from Alice, had received from Mrs. Catherine strange looks of musing melancholy, and one abrupt expression of wonder—
“Who was she like?”
Miss Falconer herself had gallopped a couple of miles out of her way, and stopped at the Mill, with her horse in a foam, to make acquaintance with the little Donna. Jacky had constituted herself her bodyguard and attendant, and carried her off whole days on solitary rambles among the hills. There were few of all the circle round who were not interested in the stranger child.
But no one received so great a share of Lilie’s regard, or was so powerfully attracted towards her, as Anne Ross. There was a new pleasure now in the long walks, which had a half hour’s playful intercourse with Lilie to make them cheerful; and Anne again and again repeated her inquiries concerning the stranger who had left the child with Mrs. Melder, without however eliciting anything new.
“She wasna put on like a lady,” repeated the miller’s wife. “My ain muckle shawl, wi’ the border, was worth twa o’ the ain she had on, and naething but a printed goun. But I have seen folk in silks and satins, Miss Anne, that had a commoner look—no that she was bonnie—but you saw her yoursel.”
“Yes,” said Anne; “she was a very remarkable looking person.”
“Na’ but the eyes of her! They made me that I near sat down and fainted—they had sic a wistful, murning look in them. The bairn’s are no unlike. Haud up your head, Lilie, my lamb—only it wad tak watching and sorrow, if I’m no far mistaken, to gie her yon look. Waes me, Miss Anne! it spoke o’ a sair heart!”
“But Lilie’s are bright and happy,” said Anne, drawing the child closer to her, and looking affectionately upon the little face, from which shone eyes deep enough in their liquid darkness to mirror forth great sorrows. “We must not let grief come near Lilie.”
“Lilie blythe—blythe?” said the child, clinging to her side. “Lilie no like happy. Blythe is bonnier! Lilie go the morn—up—up!”
“To the hills, Lilie?”
“Up—up!” said the child, imitating with feet and hands the motions of climbing. “Lilie look away far—at the water.”
“At the Oran, Lilie?”
“Where he go to?” asked Lilie, pointing through the window to the brown, foaming water—”rinning fast? Where he go to?”
“To the sea, Lilie,” said Anne.
“Yes—yes,” said the child. “Lilie once sail upon the sea; row—row—in a big boat. Lilie likes to look at it.”
“Were you alone, Lilie?” said Anne. “Was no one with you?”
The child did not understand.
“A big boat—big—big—bigger than yon!” Lilie had seen Mrs. Catherine’s little vessel on the Oran, and had been greatly interested in it. “Lilie ran about,” and the child eked out her slender vocabulary with the universal language of signs, “and saw the sea; but the water did not come upon Lilie.”
“And was there no one to take care of Lilie?” said Anne.—”No one to put on her little frock, and to comb these pretty curls?”
The child looked up thoughtfully for a moment, and then, hiding her face in Anne’s lap, burst out into a passion of tears, moaning out in her own language a lamentation over her “good nurse, her Juana,” with all the inconsolable vehemence of childhood.
“She has done that before,” said Mrs. Melder. “Can ye make onything o’ the words, Miss Anne? I hae gotten to ken the sound o’ them, though neither Robert nor me can make ony sense o’ the outlandish tongue. Lilie, my lamb, whisht, like a guid bairn, and dry your eyes. See what a bonnie book Miss Anne has brocht ye, and pictures in’t!
“There’s mony o’ the neighbors wonder at us,” continued Mrs. Melder, as the child, when its fit of weeping was over, clambered up upon the table in the window, and sat there, in enjoyment of the picture-book, “for taking a bairn we ken naething about; and ye may think it foolish too, Miss Anne. But the house was waesome wi’ Robert out a’ day, and the bit thing had a pitiful look wi’t, and the leddy—for she bid to be a leddy, though she was plain enough put on—pleaded wi’ me in sic a way that I couldna withstand it; and we’re clar o’ a’ loss, wi’ the siller being in Mr. Foreman’s hand; and the bairn—puir wee desolate thing, cast off by its ain bluid—is a fine bairn, now that she’s learning to speak in a civilized tongue. My ain Bell, if the Almighty had spared her, would hae been about Lilie’s age. Eh, Miss Anne! a young lady like you canna ken what a sore dispensation that was! But we maun hae our ain way.”
“And do you think the lady could be Lilie’s mother?” said Anne, after a pause.
“It’s hard to say,” said Mrs. Melder; “but I am maistly inclined to think no, Miss Anne, for ye see the bairn disna greet after her the way she did the now, when ye asked her wha came hame wi’ her; and the leddy hersel, though she beggit me to be careful o’ the bairn, did not keep her in her sight till the last moment, as a mother would have done; and when she went by the Mill, Robert says—for he was watching—that she never stopped to look back; sae I think she may have been a friend further off, Miss Anne, but she couldna be Lilie’s mother.”
“Strange!” said Anne, “that any friend, above all a mother should send away a child so interesting!”
“Ay, Miss Anne,” said Mrs. Melder; “but the like o’ you disna ken. There are bitterer things in this world than even grief.—One canna tell. It may be a shame and a disgrace to some decent family, that that wee thing, pleasant as she is, has ever drawn breath—and the lady may be some kin of the mother’s, bringing it away out o’ the sight o’ kent folk and friends. The like of that is ower common. Eh, pity me! there’s nae counting the wiles o’ the enemy! There’s Strathoran, ye see, and the gentlemen that’s in’t playing at their cartes and their dice, they tell me, on the very Sabbath day itsel! Is’t no enough to bring a judgment on the country-side? If auld Strathoran—honest man—could but look down into his ain house now, I canna think but what it would make his heart sair—evenyonder. He was a guid man, auld Strathoran, though he did put Mr. Bairnsfather into the parish.”
“Was that wrong, Mrs. Melder?” said Anne.
“The Apostle says we’re no to speak evil o’ the ruler o’ our people,” said Mrs. Melder; “but, eh, Miss Anne, he’s wersh and unprofitable. When I was in my trouble and sorrow (and who can tell how dark the earth is, and a’thing in’t, when one is bereaved o’ their first-born—their only lamb!) Robert brought the minister, thinking he could speak a word o’ comfort to me; and what think ye he said, Miss Anne? No that I was to look to my Lord that had gathered my lamb to his ain bosom, out of a’ the ills o’ this world, but that I was to be reasonable and calm, and bear the trouble wi’ fortitude, because it couldna be helpit. That was a’ the comfort he had to speak to a distracted woman, whose only bairn was in its grave! But he never had ony little ones himsel.”
“And you do not come to the Church, now?” said Anne, holding out her hand, as Lilie descended from the table, and came to her side again.
“Na; we were once gaun to the Meeting, Robert and me, for the Seceder minister preaches guid doctrine, but we couldna think to leave the Kirk. My father was an elder for twenty year—sae we aye waited on till Mr. Lumsden came to Portoran. Eh, Miss Anne, he’s a grand man! They say there’s no the like o’ him in the haill Presbytery!”
“What is this, Lilie?” cried Anne.
Lilie had brought her new “Shorter Catechism,” that much-prized text-book of Presbyterian Scotland, to point out the lessons which she was to repeat to Robert Melder, on the Sabbath afternoon, according to the venerable and excellent custom of such religious humble households; and insisted upon repeating her former “questions” and the first Psalm she had learnt in her new language.
Anne took the book, well pleased, and listened, while Lilie repeated that beautiful proposition in which all Scotland for centuries has learned to define the chief end of man, and then, with some slight stammering and uncertainty, went on: