“To my children, Anne and Lewis Ross:“I am a dying man, and will never see either of you arrive at years to be trusted with such a secret; but I charge you, when this packet comes to your hands, to give earnest heed to it, as you value the last words of your father. I am standing in the presence of my Lord, with death at my door, a hoary-headed man, bent to the grave with trouble, and I leave to you who come after me, my solemn conviction that Norman Rutherford, your brother, is innocent of the crime laid to his charge. The whole course of his past life is before me, and my eyes are clear with looking upon death face to face. This blood is not upon Norman’s hand. Listen to his own words, children; and believe with me that his words are true. A frail and stricken man, I have done nothing to clear him of the imputed guilt; but as a special heritage, I leave this work to you. His blood is in your veins; he is your nearest kindred. Children of my old age, save my son Norman! As you would have a blessing on your own youth and prosperity, remember the desolate exile in his wanderings, and clear his name and fame. My eye is waxing heavy, and my hand weak—it is the beginning of death. Anne, sole child of his mother! Lewis, heir of my name! my charge is upon you. I appeal you to the throne of Him, who, in the fulness of His glory, forgot not this fallen world, but left a heavenly kingdom to save and die for it—if you disregard the last petition my lips will ever utter on this earth. My son Norman is innocent of this blood—clear him of the blot upon his name—bring him back to die peacefully in his own land, and the blessing of the God who binds up the broken-hearted, be about you all, for evermore.Lawrence Ross.”
“To my children, Anne and Lewis Ross:
“I am a dying man, and will never see either of you arrive at years to be trusted with such a secret; but I charge you, when this packet comes to your hands, to give earnest heed to it, as you value the last words of your father. I am standing in the presence of my Lord, with death at my door, a hoary-headed man, bent to the grave with trouble, and I leave to you who come after me, my solemn conviction that Norman Rutherford, your brother, is innocent of the crime laid to his charge. The whole course of his past life is before me, and my eyes are clear with looking upon death face to face. This blood is not upon Norman’s hand. Listen to his own words, children; and believe with me that his words are true. A frail and stricken man, I have done nothing to clear him of the imputed guilt; but as a special heritage, I leave this work to you. His blood is in your veins; he is your nearest kindred. Children of my old age, save my son Norman! As you would have a blessing on your own youth and prosperity, remember the desolate exile in his wanderings, and clear his name and fame. My eye is waxing heavy, and my hand weak—it is the beginning of death. Anne, sole child of his mother! Lewis, heir of my name! my charge is upon you. I appeal you to the throne of Him, who, in the fulness of His glory, forgot not this fallen world, but left a heavenly kingdom to save and die for it—if you disregard the last petition my lips will ever utter on this earth. My son Norman is innocent of this blood—clear him of the blot upon his name—bring him back to die peacefully in his own land, and the blessing of the God who binds up the broken-hearted, be about you all, for evermore.
Lawrence Ross.”
Anne laid down the letter, her eyes full of grateful tears, almostjoyful in their tremulous solemnity. There was sorrow, and labor, and darkness in the way—there was not crime. The blessed belief came into her soul in solemn sunshine—the cloud rolled off her head. A strange invigoration was in every vein. Norman wasalive!alive to receive the triumphant acquittal of justice—alive to be saved! She opened his letter, her tears falling thick upon it: other drops had fallen there before—the tears of the old man’s agony. She read it.
“Before you see this, they will have told you that I am a murderer. It is not so, father: believe a despairing man, it is not so. Arthur Aytoun has done me wrong: but I would not have put a hair of his head in peril. I would have guarded him with my own life. Wherever he is, be it in joy or misery, he bears me witness, before God, that I am innocent of his blood. Father my heart is like to burst. What can I say to you—my hand is clean. I am innocent!—I am innocent! there is no blood upon my soul. And yet I dare not venture to trust myself to a trial, with every circumstance against me. I have nothing for it but flight. To-night I go further away—I know not where—under cover of the darkness, like a felon and a criminal, as men will call me. It gnaws at my very heart. I would rather have died a thousand times—a cold-blooded, cowardly murderer! Father, father! you will not believe it of your son!“They would find me guilty if I remained—they could not fail to find me guilty—and the disgrace of a fugitive will be less upon our house and name than the disgrace of a convicted murderer, dying a shameful death. It is like a coward to fly. I am a coward. I do not dare to meet that fatal judgment. I could not bear to hear myself called guilty, with my innocence strong in my heart. I have a suspicion, too—a terrible fear and suspicion—and I must fly. Father, I can say no more, even to you. I am a sinful man before God; but my hand is as pure of blood, as when I stood beside you on Oranside, before death had ever entered Merkland. They know in Heaven—if they can see my unhappy fortunes—my mother, Lawrence, Edward—they know that I am innocent. I do not know what I say. My thoughts are wandering like a sick man’s. Father, I am innocent!“Marion is with me—she is my wife. We have escaped from the sea in peril of our lives—they will tell you I have perished in it—I would I had, but for Marion. Father, you may never hear from me, or of me, again; but again remember, I am innocent—this blood does not stand between God and me. Why this fearful cloud has covered us, He knows who sent it. It may depart yet, in His good time. For this unjust world, farewell, father. We will meet where there are no false accusations—where God himselfshall vindicate the right. I become patient—I become trustful. Father, pray—pray that I may live to be cleared of this horror—that the curse may be taken from my name—that I may be acknowledged guiltless.N. R. R.”
“Before you see this, they will have told you that I am a murderer. It is not so, father: believe a despairing man, it is not so. Arthur Aytoun has done me wrong: but I would not have put a hair of his head in peril. I would have guarded him with my own life. Wherever he is, be it in joy or misery, he bears me witness, before God, that I am innocent of his blood. Father my heart is like to burst. What can I say to you—my hand is clean. I am innocent!—I am innocent! there is no blood upon my soul. And yet I dare not venture to trust myself to a trial, with every circumstance against me. I have nothing for it but flight. To-night I go further away—I know not where—under cover of the darkness, like a felon and a criminal, as men will call me. It gnaws at my very heart. I would rather have died a thousand times—a cold-blooded, cowardly murderer! Father, father! you will not believe it of your son!
“They would find me guilty if I remained—they could not fail to find me guilty—and the disgrace of a fugitive will be less upon our house and name than the disgrace of a convicted murderer, dying a shameful death. It is like a coward to fly. I am a coward. I do not dare to meet that fatal judgment. I could not bear to hear myself called guilty, with my innocence strong in my heart. I have a suspicion, too—a terrible fear and suspicion—and I must fly. Father, I can say no more, even to you. I am a sinful man before God; but my hand is as pure of blood, as when I stood beside you on Oranside, before death had ever entered Merkland. They know in Heaven—if they can see my unhappy fortunes—my mother, Lawrence, Edward—they know that I am innocent. I do not know what I say. My thoughts are wandering like a sick man’s. Father, I am innocent!
“Marion is with me—she is my wife. We have escaped from the sea in peril of our lives—they will tell you I have perished in it—I would I had, but for Marion. Father, you may never hear from me, or of me, again; but again remember, I am innocent—this blood does not stand between God and me. Why this fearful cloud has covered us, He knows who sent it. It may depart yet, in His good time. For this unjust world, farewell, father. We will meet where there are no false accusations—where God himselfshall vindicate the right. I become patient—I become trustful. Father, pray—pray that I may live to be cleared of this horror—that the curse may be taken from my name—that I may be acknowledged guiltless.
N. R. R.”
Norman Rutherford’s sister was kneeling before his portrait—her clasped hands holding her forehead, her eyes raining hot tears, her soul poured out before God. Norman wasalive—could be prayed for, hoped for, toiled for. The curse was turned into a blessing. The path was wintry still, and bare, and laborious; but that horrible spectre of blood was gone; and the majestic presence of justice, and the clear rays of hope, were on the way instead. She was able for all labor, all patience, all sorrow in his cause. Norman was innocent.
Anna rose at length, folded the precious letters carefully, placed them in her bosom, and then hastily descended the stair, and set out again for the old nurse’s cottage, to learn, according to her original intention, the particulars of this dark history there. The Oran moaned no more, but only murmured plaintively, between his banks, the kindly song of home; and Anne, as she passed under the trees, almost with a light heart, murmured to herself the prayer of Alice Aytoun’s song—for the wayfaring man.
ESTHERFleming, Norman Rutherford’s nurse, lived in a cottage by herself, not far from Merkland. When the first Mrs. Ross’s first son was born, Esther had entered her service as “bairns’-maid,” had left it again to be married, and after a brief period of two years had returned a youthful widow, with one boy infant of her own, between whose birth and Norman’s there was but some brief intervals of weeks. Esther had remained the head of Mrs. Ross’s nursery through the vicissitudes of all the succeeding years; had received into her charge infant after infant of Mrs. Ross’s family, and with grief, less only than the mother’s, had seen the tender blossoms fall one by one into the family grave: but Norman was peculiarly her own—a tie especially tender attached the generous, manly boy, to his foster-mother; and when her own handsome sailor-lad, returned from his first voyage, stood up to measure his height with that of his playmate and comrade, Esther’s overflowing eye looked with scarce less partial pride upon Norman Rutherford than upon William Fleming. When Mrs. Rossherself died, the little Anne became the object of Esther’s devoted and unceasing care, although her removal from Merkland to the cottage she now occupied took place before the second marriage of Mr. Ross; but even after that event, bitterly as the faithful servant resented it, Esther continued, for her delicate nurseling’s sake, to hold her footing in Merkland, and to pay daily visits to her old dominion in the nursery, asserting against all comers, and in face of the new darling, Lewis himself, the rights and privileges of “Miss Anne.” But when Anne was still a child, a blight fell upon Esther Fleming; the self-same blight, which brought the gray hairs of Norman Rutherford’s father in sorrow to the grave. The old nurse, stronger, or more tenacious of life, had borne her sorrow silently, and marked it more by her utter seclusion from the rustic society round her, than by any other demonstration. She had a little niece living with her, to manage her small domestic concerns, and except through this girl and Anne, Esther had no intercourse with the world—the very brief and quiet world—about her. Her house stood on a high bank of the Oran, with a pathway winding before it; and the grassy descent, dark with old trees and bushes, shelving steeply down behind. Within, the little dwelling consisted of two apartments, perfectly clean and neat (as is, indeed, much more usual in our Scottish cottage than southern readers give us credit for,) though without any attempt at ornament, except the two or three small profile portraits of children, which hung over the mantlepiece of the outer room, the only existing memorials of the dead sons and daughters of the house of Merkland, which Esther had rescued from their disgrace, in the lumber-room, after Mr. Ross’s death.
The nurse herself, in her gown and petticoat of dark print, and white cap bordered with narrow lace, and carefully-kept hood of black velvet, sat sewing by the fire, making shirts for her sailor son, then far away in a man-of-war, toiling upon the sea. Esther was alone, so there was no obstacle in the way of Anne’s errand.
“Esther,” she said, when she had delayed nervously for some time, in indifferent conversation, “I have come to ask you about a very grave matter, of which I only heard recently. A secret, Esther—you know—”
She paused. Esther looked up gravely in her face, and then, rising, closed the door.
“Mr. Norman?” she asked in a very low voice.
“Yes,” said Anne. “You know it all, Esther?”
“God be thanked that has put it in your heart to ask,” said the nurse, solemnly. “Yes, Miss Anne, I ken. It has been lying heavy on my heart since ever that cloud fell upon my boy. I have looked to you—I have aye looked to. Ye are like yourmother, and will not falter. Oh, Miss Anne! if ye but kent how it has lain upon my heart!”
Anne looked at her inquisitively, uncertain how far her knowledge went, or whether it was safe to speak to her of Norman, as alive.
“Ye are doubtful of me, Miss Anne,” said Esther. “I see it in your eye. What of this story do ye ken yoursel? Have ye heard itall?”
Anne faltered.
“I do not know, Esther. I have heard—”
“Let me tell ye whatIken,” interrupted the nurse, “and then ye can give me your full trust. I claim nothing less from your mother’s bairn. Miss Anne, your brother Norman lies under the reproach of a black crime—the blackest that man can be blotted wi’. Folk think that he is dead, and he is guilty; he is not either the one nor the other. He is a living and an innocent man!”
Anne’s whole frame thrilled with joy as the words were said.—Solemn as was the testimony of the dead, and deeply as her hapless brother’s self-defence moved her, the words seemed surer and more hopeful when a living voice pronounced them.
“I want you to tell me everything, Esther,” she said, eagerly.—”I have Norman’s letter, and my father’s testimony, but, except these, I have heard little. This morning I was in despair, because I knew that Norman lived, and believed that he was guilty. Now, I can do anything. His innocence is all I care for. Tell me what can be done to prove his innocence—rather, I should say, tell me every circumstance, Esther—tell me all you know.”
“I care about his innocence also,” said Esther. “Yes, living or dead, I care about that first. But, Miss Anne, ye dinna ken—ye canna fathom how dearly I care about himsel. He was laid in my arms a helpless, greeting bairn, the first day o’ his life; wi’ my ain hands I put his first mortal claes about him—my boy!—my gallant, mirthful boy! And to think of him spending his best years toiling in a strange country, wi’ a dark end hanging ower him, his name cursed, and his lands lost!—and him an innocent man! Oh! I have thought upon it till my heart was like to burst!”
“Why did you not tell me?” said Anne. “We have lost years! Esther, there might have been something done long ago, if you had only told me.”
“I durstna,” said the nurse. “I was feared to whisper to mysel that he was living, for fear of trouble; but now, Miss Anne, now, ye have your work before ye—and a strange work it is for a young lady. But ye maunna shrink or fail.”
“I will not—do not fear me,” said Anne. “Only tell me, Esther—tell me everything you know—let us lose no more time.”
“It’s a lang story,” said Esther, “and ye maun let me tell yemy ain way, Miss Anne, as I have thought it ower in my ain spirt, money a time, looking for this day. Maybe, if ye haena patience wi’ me, I may mak it no sae clear. It’s a lang story, and, to understand it right, ye bid to ken his nature. I maun begin at the beginning.”
Anne assented, and Esther went on. “Miss Anne, he was the sweetest bairn that was ever putten into mortal hands for earthly upbringing. I think I can see him before me yet; aye the head o’ them a’ in their wild plays, and never out o’ mischief; but, for a’ that, as gentle as a lamb. I used to tell them, when they came in to me wi’ torn claes and dirty shoes, and blythe, black faces, that they were the plagues o’ my life—eh! Miss Anne, the ill o’ thae idle words—they were its very joy and sunshine; my blythe callants!—my bonnie, brave, pleasant bairns!
“For Mr. Norman was alike in age wi’ my Willie, and the twa were like brithers; they lay in the same cradle, and were nursed in the same arms—puir, feckless, withered arms, as they are noo!—and I had a conceit that they were like ane an ither, though Mr. Norman was head and shouthers higher than Willie, and had eyes like stars in a frosty nicht, and hair as dark as the clouds; and Willie was blue-e’ed and fair-haired, like his father before him. Ony way, they were like in spirit; the very look of them was heartsome in a house.
“But there was ane thing special, Miss Anne, about your brother; a thought o’ pleasure never entered his head; he had a sunshine within himsel that keepit him aye cheery; and the bits o’ dawting, and good things, and makings o’, that ither bairns fecht for, he heeded not, though I never saw a laddie that liket better the quietest mark of kindliness: only, if there was onything like a privilege or an honor, he would aye have it wared on the rest; no jealous and grudging, like as ye will see some bairns, that are learned to pretend to do the like, and no to be selfish; but with a blythe spark shining in his eye, enjoying the good thing, whatever it was, far mair than if he had gotten it himsel.
“It might be because Mr. Lawrence was aye delicate, and bid to get his ain way; but the maist of it, without doubt, was in the nature. My ain Willie was a kindly callant, as need to be; but I have seen him (who was only a poor man’s son, and no equal to the young Laird,) standing out against Mr. Lawrence in his pets, when Mr. Norman gaed way, in his blythe, frank manner, without sae much as a thought about ony pride o’ his ain; and I have kent him, money a time, when ony o’ them were in the wrang, taking the blame upon himsel.
“Ye will think I am dwelling on thae auld stories ower lang, Miss Anne; but I see them—I think I can see them on Oranside,Mr. Lawrence sitting, white and thin, on the bank, watching them; and my ain twa, my beautiful laddies! as wild in their innocent play as twa foals on a lee; and the cut fingers, and the torn clothes, and the fa’s into Oran: waes me! what were a’ their bits o’ tribulations but just another name for joy?
“Weel, Mr. Lawrence died, as ye ken. If he was petted whiles, it was wi’ sickness and suffering—pain that the young spirit could ill bear, and that awfu’ cough; but he was a blessed bairn, and departed as calm and pleasant as an angel gaun hame—as truly he was, puir lamb!—out of a world that had held nothing but ill to him; and the other bairns dwined away from the house o’ Merkland. Eh! Miss Anne, ane canna read thae sore and sorrowful dispensations! To think that there should be sae mony blythe families round about, wi’ no ane wee head lifted out among them, and a’ the Mistress’s lilies gathered—a’ but Mr. Norman; and ye wad have thought the rest had left a portion of their life to him, as that strange lassie, Jacky Morison, was saying to me out of a book of ballants, about three knights—aye as the ane was killed, the spirit and the strength of him entered into the other; but that’s a fule story. So, as I was saying, ye might have thought it was so wi’ Mr. Norman; for, the mair death there was in the house, the stronger and fuller of lifehegrew. Ye may think, Miss Anne, how the Mistress’s heart was bound up in her one son, growing among tears and troubles, like a strong young tree by the waterside.
“And then she died hersel. He wad be haill eighteen then, maistly a man; and ye wad have thought his heart would burst. For months after that, he used to come in and sit beside me in the nursery, never speaking a word. We were the truest mourners in Merkland, him and me, and maybe it made us like ane anither a’ the better.
“It was a dreary year, that first year after your mother died; but there were drearier years to come. The twelvemonth was just out, when it began to be whispered in the countryside that Merkland was courting a new wife. I could have felled the first body that said it to me, and Mr. Norman flew upon Duncan, in the greatest passion I ever saw him in, for dauring to hint at sic a word; but the rumor rose, for a’ that (folk said it was because Mr. Norman had been put aside from inheriting Merkland, because he was to take his uncle’s name, and sae noo there was nae heir,) till I put it to the Laird my ain sel—ye may think it bauld, Miss Anne, but I had been about the house a’ his married life.—That very night—for I wasna likely to bide wi’ a strange woman in my mistress’s seat—I was sorting my bits of odds and ends to gang away; and looking at you, sleeping in your wee bed, and murning for ye, an innocent lamb, left to the cold mercies of astepmother, when Mr. Norman came in. I saw, by the white look of him, in a moment, that he had been hurt and wounded to the very heart (and so he was,) for his father had tell’t him. Eh! Miss Anne, to think that he could tell the fine, manly, grown-up lad, that nae mortal could help being proud o’; and that was liker being marriet himsel than hearing tell o’ his father.
“So he sat down by the fireside and covered his face wi’ his hands, and did not say a word to me—only I heard him moaning to himsel, ‘O, mother, mother!’ Nae wonder—we were wearing our murnings still, and she had been but ae twelvemonth gone.
“So the marriage-day came at last. I had flitted into this house the week afore—and there were mony folk at the wedding, only Mrs. Catherine, and Strathoran’s lady, and some more, wouldna come; and when they sought Mr. Norman, he wasna to be found far or near—where think ye he spent that day, Miss Anne? at his mother’s grave!
“Ye’re wearying on me—it’s just because it’s a’ sae clear in my ain mind—I canna help it; but I am coming to the time noo. Mr. Norman ye ken, had an inheritance o’ his ain by the mother’s side. Your uncle, Mr. Rutherford, of Redheugh, was a bachelor gentleman, and died three or four years before your mother—and Mr. Norman was his heir. He was to take both the land and the name, and I have heard it was a better property than Merkland, only it was far south by this, on the ither side o’ Edinburgh. Mr. Norman was to bide wi’ his father till he came of age, and a sore and weary time it was, for this Mrs. Ross couldna bear the sicht of him, and he likit her as ill. I maistly wished for his ain sake that the time was come, though it was a sore thought to me that I was to have the sight o’ him, gladdening my auld e’en (I wasna sae auld then either nae mair).
“And at last his one-and-twentieth birthday came, and he gaed away. I did not see him after that for a whole year. The light of my eyes was ta’en from me, Miss Anne—I had little pleasure of my life, for both my boys were away.
“Willie had served out his prenticeship, and was sailing second-mate in a timber ship to the Baltic; but that time he had ta’en a langer voyage, to India and thereaway, and didna came hame till the year was out. The very next day after Willie came, Mr. Norman arrived on a visit at Merkland, and the first body he came to see, after his father, was just my very sel—and what do ye think he had been devising in the kindness of his heart for my Willie? There was a schooner lying at Leith on sale, and Mr. Norman had made an offer for’t, for Willie’s sake, and no ither, to make him captain; and when they had rested themsells a week at hame, Mr. Norman took Willie away to Leith wi’ him to see the ship. Weel, Miss Anne, every thing was bright for baith o’ themwhen they gaed away; but when they got to Leith, and had near settled about the boat, my puir Willie, being maybe ower proud and uplifted about the honor, and the grand prospect, was careless o’ himself: and the first word that came to me was, no that he was captain of Mr. Norman’s ship, but that he was pressed, and ta’en away to some of the muckle English sea-towns on the east coast, to be a common man afore the mast in a man-o-war.”
Esther paused to wipe her eyes with her apron.
“Eh, Miss Anne, thae sore and humbling providences! just when ane thought every thing was prosperous and full of promise to be cast down into the very depths—my heart was sick within me. I had no more spirit for onything, but just gaed about the house like a ghaist, and caredna to spin, as the lass says in the sang. Mr. Norman did his endeavor to free my puir laddie, but it couldna be—and ye may think what a clould fell upon me, dwelling here alane, and my son far away in the dangers o’ the war, where, if he were spared, I couldna see him for years.
“Mr. Norman came seldom back to Merkland after that. He liked Mrs. Ross but little at all times, and I think he reproached himsel for no being carefu’ enough of Willie, though I never blamed him—no for a moment; but onyway he was altogether pairted from his ain auld hame—no that he forgot us; there was aye the tither bit present coming to me, at New-year’s times, and his birth-days and the like; and many fine claes and toys, and things, to yoursel, Miss Anne, that ye didna get the half o’—
“So three years ran out, and ane day when I happened to be up at Merkland, on some errand concerning yoursel, ye came, to me, Miss Anne, wi’ a paper in your hand, to let me hear ye read (ye were six years auld then.) So I got the paper—ye had slipped it out o’ the lockit book-case in the library, the time your papa was writing a letter, and didna see ye. I mind the very words ye said—because I likit to see the papers—and so I did, to see what word there was about the war, and if there was ony tidings of Willie’s ship. Sae I got it, and began to read it, the time Mr. Lewis and you were playing at my fit.
“Eh! Miss Anne: I mind the bits of words that came in upon me now and then, when I was looking at that awful paper, as if I had heard them in a fever. There was the haill story of the murder in’t; of how Mr. Norman and Mr. Aytoun had had a bitter quarrel the night before, and parted in anger—and how, the next morning. Mr. Aytoun was found lying dead in a lone place by a waterside—and how a man, gaun to his work, had met Mr. Norman coming, like from the same place, just about the time the deed bid to hae been dune—and there was mair than that still—a gun was found in the wood, and the gun was Mr. Norman’s, and when the officers gaed to take him up, he had fled, no man kent whither. Mye’en were reeling in my head, but I could read it for a’ that—I didna lose a word; and in anither place there was mair news—the murderer, as they daured to ca’ him, had been traced into a Holland boat, and there was certain word of it, that it was wrecked, and all on board lost, so he had come, they said, to speedy punishment. I ken not now, how I had strength to do it; but I rose up the moment I was done, and went down into the library mysel’—what cared I at that time, if I had met a’ the leddies in the land?—to put it back secretly into the book-case again. Your father was sitting in the library, Miss Anne, a changed man; the white on his face was the white of death, and he was trembling like as with the cauld, and had the darkest woe in his e’e, that I ever looked upon. I put down the paper on the table, and he started, and looked up at me. There was never a word said between us; but we were equal in our terrible sorrow. He kent that, and so did I.
“I know not how I gaed hame that day; it was a bonnie day in June, but I thought that the sky, and the earth, and the trees, were a’ black alike, and the running of the Oran was hoarse and loud, like the wild sea that was flowing over my dear, dear bairn. It was before my eyes night and day, sleeping and waking. I kent he couldna have done it out of evil counsel or malice, but he might have done it in passion. The sinking ship, and the storm, and the black sky, and my pleasant laddie in the midst, wi’ bluid on his hand, and despair in his soul; oh, Miss Anne!
“A month past in that way. I dauredna face Merkland, and he never came near me, and I thought not there was any hope for Mr. Norman; I never doubted he was dead. In the beginning of July, I got a letter from Willie, telling me his ship was lying in Leith Roads, and I was to come and see him. So I put up a bit bundle, and took some lying siller, and set out upon the road. I wanted to buy some bits of things the puir laddie needed, and so I couldna afford to tak the coach, but walked every step, and a weary road it was. So Willie met me in my cousin’s house in the Citadel, and whenever our first meeting was ower, he came after me to the room I was to sleep in, and shut the door, and I saw there was trouble in his face. So I did not doubt he had heard. ‘Mother,’ he said to me, ‘I have news to tell you.’
“ ‘Oh, Willie!’ said I. ‘I ken, I ken; it has near broken my heart.’
“So Willie went to the door again, and saw it was safe shut, and said he, ‘Mother, what do ye ken?’
“ ‘About Mr. Norman, my dear laddie,’ said I; ‘that he has been left to himself, and done a terrible crime, and died a terrible death. Oh, that we had but kent that he repented; oh, that we had ony token that the Lord had visited his soul.’
“ ‘Mother,’ said Willie, very low, ‘do ye need me to tell youthat he didna do it? Do you no ken that yoursel? O, mother! mother! him that wouldna have harmed the worm at his fit.’
“ ‘Ane disna ken—ane canna tell,’ said I; ‘he never did it wi’ purpose and counsel, Willie; but he may have been beguiled by passion. God send that it hasna been counted to him.’
“ ‘Mother,’ said Willie. ‘Whisht! mind that a precious life is hinging on’t. I have seen Mr. Norman.’
“Miss Anne, I thought I would have fa’en at his feet, for what could I think, but that it was the unquiet spirit my puir laddie had seen.
“ ‘Mother,’ said Willie, ‘God has saved him out o’ the sea, near by a miracle. Mr. Norman is a living man, and an innocent man. The hand that saved him will clear him in its ain guid time; but he bade me tell you. He couldna bear, he said, that folk that had kent him, and likit him weel should think he had done that crime; and he minded me that folk could pray for a living man, and couldna for a dead, and bade me tell you, mother.’
“ ‘O, Willie!’ said I, ‘wherefore did he flee?—the right would have been proved, if he had but waited for the trial.’
“ ‘I canna tell ye, mother,’ said Willie, ‘but he said every thing was against him; and it was borne in on my mind, that he knew wha had dune the deed, and that it was ane he likit weel and was willing to suffer for—ye ken his nature—but mind, that was only a fancy o’ my ain, for he did not mint a word of it to me.’
“ ‘And where was he, Willie?’ said I, ‘where was my dear laddie?—was he out of peril?”
“ ‘It was in a town on the Holland coast,’ said Willie, ‘a bit sma place, less than Portoran. They had travelled there on fit, from the place where the boat was cast away; and Mr. Norman was waiting till there should be some ship sailing from Rotterdam to India. He said to me, mother, that he would never daur write hame again; but if he died he would cause that word should be sent baith to Merkland and you—but as lang as ye didna hear, ye were to mind and pray for him, as a living and sorrowful man, and no to think he was dead.’
“ ‘My laddie!’ said I, ‘my dear bairn!—oh, that the Lord would bring forth His righteousness as the noonday, and His judgment as the morning light. Ye saidthey, Willie—was there onybody wi’ him?’
“ ‘Yes, mother,’ said Willie; ‘Mr. Norman was married the nicht before he fled, and there was a young lady with him. She didna belang about Strathoran—I never saw her before, but Mr. Norman said that in the wreck, she was braver than him, though she was a bit genty, delicate-looking thing. Mr. Norman took me in to see her, and tell’t her I was his foster-brother and friend. He is aye like himsel, thinking on pleasuring me, in the midst o’ a’ his ain trouble—and she gaed me her hand wi’ a sorrowful smile, that made me like to greet—and whiles when he was speaking to me, when his grief was like to get the better of him, she put her bit little hand on his arm, and said, “Norman, Norman,” and then he aye calmed down again.’
“So that was a’ that Willie had to tell, and in little mair than a week after that, his ship sailed again, and when I was on my road hame, I went first of a’ to the place where the deed was done. Its on the south side o’ the Firth, far down—but I could find out naething there, except that everybody blamed Mr. Norman, and naebody would believe but what he was the murderer.
“And since then, Miss Anne—it’s seventeen years past in the last July—I have been a bereaved woman, for Willie never came hame but ance, when the war was ended, and that was just for a while, for he had pleased his captain unco weel, and was made gunner in the ship, and he had got used wi’ their life, and liked it, so he just gaed back. He said to me, I mind, that he might aye be in the way of hearing tidings of Mr. Norman, and would come hame without delay if there was ony guid word. But word, guid or bad, there has been nane since that time, Miss Anne; a weary time it has been to me—but your brother is a living man, and the work is not too late.”
“What can be done?” said Anne; “what can be done?”
She felt an impulse to rise and hurry to the work at once. She felt it a sin to lose a moment. Yet all the difficulties rose up before her. What steps to take—what to do!
“Miss Anne,” said Esther; “I have pondered it, and ower again pondered it in my ain mind since I came hame frae that weary journey, and often I have been on the point of gaun away back again, to see if I could hear onything mair. But what I would bid ye do, would be to gang, or to get some of thae keen writer chiels to gang, cannily, without letting on what they want, to do their endeavor to find out if onybody else in that countryside had an ill-will at Mr. Aytoun: he was a wild man, I heard, and nae doubt had enemies—and if ony other man had been seen leaving the wood that awful morning bye Mr. Norman. There’s been a lang time lost, but I’ve thought often, it might maybe put the real sinner aff his guard, and so he micht be easier found. Miss Anne, that is the way, sae far as I can see. Ye maun try and find the true man that did it, living or dead.”
“And bring disgrace and ruin into some other peaceful family, Esther,” said Anne, sadly. “It is a terrible alternative!”
“Miss Anne,” said Esther, “my dear laddie Norman maun be saved, if I should gang away mysel. I aye waited for you. I had no thought ye wad falter. The work is a sore and painful work, but if ye will not do it, that have better power, I will try myself.”
“I had no thought of faltering, Esther,” said Anne. “I only said it was a very sad and terrible alternative, and so it is—if William was correct—if we are to endeavor to prove the guilt of one whom Norman was willing to sacrifice name and fame for, it is only so much the more painful. Yet I do not falter—you say truly, Norman must be saved—if it is within human power to clear his name, he shall be saved. But, oh! for guidance—for wisdom!”
When Anne left the house, Esther accompanied her to the door, earnestly urging upon her the necessity of losing no time. To lose no time!—no, surely; when, for all Alice Aytoun’s sunny lifetime, Norman had been an outcast and an exile.
And the “Marion!”—who was this who had not deserted him in the midnight of his calamity? this who had been bolder amidst the perils of the wreck than he, and who had gone with him to the unknown far country, the outcast’s wife? Anne’s imagination no longer pictured him alone, abroad beneath sweeping blast and tempest. A calmer air stole over the picture. It might be from some humble toiling home—not bright, yet with a chastened sunshine of hope and patience about it still—that the tidings of restored honor and fortune should call the exile, and the exile’s household, rejoicing to their own land.
LEWISROSSfound but a cold welcome at the Tower from its aged mistress. Why she addressed him with so much reserve, and without even the familiar harshness of her usual manner, Lewis could not understand, and it roused his indignation mightily. He, an independent man, a landed proprietor of influence, a travelled, educated gentleman, to be over-borne by the caprices and prejudices of a set of old women! His dignity was hurt, his petulant pride roused. He certainlywasconscious of doing simple Alice Aytoun some considerable honor, and did not fancy there was anything unnatural in his mother thinking that he might have done better—but to control his liberty—to think that by all this coldness and discouragement, they could change the current of his inclination and affections—it was quite too much. Lewis did not feel by any means inclined to submit to it. He felt, too, that Archibald Sutherland shrank from his not very delicate questionings, and that, beyond all doubt, he himself, Lewis Ross, of Merkland,important person as he was, was decidedlyde tropin the Tower.
Even Alice felt it, as she sat in her corner by the window, that delicate embroidery, which she wished to finish for a cap to Mrs. Catherine, before she returned home, trembling in her small fingers, and her heart beating loud and unsteadily. Mrs. Catherine had been so tender to herself this morning, almost as if she knew—it was so strange that she should be cold to Lewis. Mrs. Catherine left the room for a moment: Lewis approached the window, and whispered a petition, that she would meet him at “the little gate.” Alice did not say no. “Immediately,” whispered Lewis. “I have a great deal to say to you.”
Alice laid down her embroidery, and leaving the room, stole tremulously up stairs, to put on her bonnet and shawl, and steal tremulously down again, and out to her first tryste. The little gate stood on a shady by-way, or “loaning,” which ran by Oranside through the grounds of Strathoran and the Tower. Lewis joined her immediately. He had much to say to her—much that was very pleasant to hear, if it was not very wise, nor even very connected and relevant, for Lewis, spite of his boyish pride and self importance, felt truly and deeply, so far as little Alice was concerned, and had not escaped the ameliorating effect of that influence, which, according to the gay old epicurean of our Scottish ballad-writers, “gives one an air, and even improves the mind.”—The youthful couple wandered through the loaning, unconscious in their own dreamy happiness of the chill wind that swept through its high bare hedges, till nearly an hour had passed. But Alice suddenly saw, through the gap in the hedge, Miss Falconer riding quickly to the Tower; she came, by appointment, to bid Alice good-by, and so that most pleasant ramble must, of necessity, be terminated. Alice accompanied Lewis a little further down the lane, lest Marjory’s quick eye should discover him, and then they parted.
She was to leave the Tower in a week; but too pleasantly absorbed to think even of that, Alice went lightly along the dim loaning, with its high rustling hedges, and borders of wet herbage. Only one little grief lay within the glad heart, which began to throb now with deeper happiness—Anne; why would not Lewis Ross’s sister acknowledge, last night her agitated, shame-faced, simple embrace? It was the only way which Alice could think of, for intimating to Anne the connexion now formed between them; and she trembled again, to remember the cold hand that had been laid upon her head, the look of sharp silent pain, that had fallen upon Lewis and herself as they stood together, in the first confidence of their betrothal—Anne, who had always been so kind and gentle to her! It made Alice uneasy, as she went dreamily forward, until brighter imaginations came to the rescue, andAnne’s neglect sank into the background, in presence of that more immediate sunshine, the warmer devotion of Lewis.
Loud gay voices startled her, when she had nearly reached the little gate, and looking up, she saw a couple of gentlemen approaching, whom she immediately knew to belong to Lord Gillravidge’s not very orderly household at Strathoran. The aforesaid little gate was the boundary of Mrs. Catherine’s property, so Alice was then in the grounds of Strathoran—the gentlemen were returning home. Alice proceeded quickly, eager to pass them, for their loud tone startled her, and she was near enough to hear a rude compliment aimed at herself, which sent the womanly blood to her cheek in indignation. They met at last, and suddenly extending their arms, the strangers barred her passage. Little Alice’s heart beat like a frightened bird. She ran to each side of the road, only to shrink back again from the rude hands extended towards her; she looked back to see if there was any chance in flight, she lifted her simple face imploringly to them, and said; “Pray, let me pass; pray, gentlemen, let me pass.” They laughed at her; poor little Alice was in despair.
One of the strangers was the “hairy fule,” who had visited Mrs. Catherine. Jacky’s expressive description of him: “A man, dressed like a gentleman,” was emphatically correct. The other was a simple, foolish, fair-haired lad, who, besides some boyish admiration of the pretty girl, thought this interruption of her progress a pleasant frolic, and good fun. There was no other way of entering the precincts of the Tower, except by the gap in the hedge, which the timid Alice did not dare to venture on, and so she renewed her prayer. “Pray, let me go on; pray, gentlemen, let me pass.”
A crash of the boughs behind her, made Alice turn her head.—Marjory Falconer, riding-whip in hand, came springing through the gap. “What is the matter, Alice?” cried Miss Falconer; “who obstructs you? Gentlemen, be so good as give way.”
The gentlemen laughed. The house of Falconer, like the house of Seton in old days, was of prompt ire, and its sole daughter did it no discredit. “This is great impertinence,” exclaimed Marjory; “pass immediately, or—” she gave an emphatic flourish of her whip.
A louder laugh than before bade her defiance; in another moment an unhesitating cut of the ready whip made the younger of the two spring aside. Alice flew past, and Marjory lingered for an instant to sweep a few short, sharp lashes over the amazed Fitzherbert, whose strange grimace of rage sent his young comrade into a fit of laughter, and earned for Marjory a full forgiveness of his own individual stroke. “There!” cried Marjory Falconer, as she closed the gate behind her, her face shining withmingled mirth and anger. “You can boast that you have had the honor of being horse-whipped by a lady.”
Little Alice was running on, in a great tremor, to the Tower.—”What is the matter?” said her deliverer, laughing, as she overtook her. “What a trembling, frightened bird you are, little Alice Aytoun. Why, we have had an adventure: only, to be correct, it should have been Lewis Ross who delivered you, and not I: is it so? Ah, I am afraid he has been doing damage here, this same Lewis Ross. It is a great shame—these men monopolize everything; one cannot even get a nice little girl kept to oneself.”
Alice drew herself up. It was not quite proper that she, the head elect of an important house like Merkland, with a shadow of matronly dignity upon her fair brow already, should be spoken of as a little girl. “I was so glad you came, Miss Falconer. It was very foolish, perhaps; but they frightened me.”
“And you had no whip, even if you had been bold enough to use it,” said Miss Falconer, laughing, as she gathered up the train of her riding-habit, which had escaped from her hand, and bore sundry marks (no uncommon thing, however) of its contact with the damp path. “You may be thankful it was my indecorous, unfeminine self, and not any of the proprieties. Suppose it had been Jeannie Coulter—why, they would have caught you both.”
“But Miss Coulter is a very nice girl; is she not?” said Alice.
“Oh! exceedingly—as nice a girl as could be; and will be as good-looking, and proper, and sensible a Mrs. Walter Foreman as it will be possible to find in the country; as proper, and not quite so good-looking, and more sensible, than you will be, when you are Mrs. Lewis Ross; for she has come to years of discretion, you know, and you are only a little girl.”
Alice did not like all this. “I wonder at you, Miss Falconer! I am sure it is far better to be what you call proper than—” Alice hesitated; “I mean, no one thinks Mrs. Catherine, and Mrs. Coulter, and Miss Ross weak, because they are always like what ladies should be.”
Miss Falconer laughed. “Well done, my little Mentor; but, for all that, confess that I was of more service to-day, with my good stout arm, than if I had been always like what ladies should be. Miss Lumsden is staying with me at the Craig: I had a bold purpose of getting my poor mother’s old phæton hunted up, and driving her over to see you; but we cannot compass a vehicle, we Falconers, so I had to give it up. It is just as well. Miss Lumsden (she’s John Lumsden’s sister, of Portoran,) would have been shocked. I shall take your advice, little Miss Aytoun; I shall abstain from shocking people unnecessarily, after this, when I can help it.”
This was better: the little matron elect was pleased to have her advice taken, and so ventured further. “And, Miss Falconer, don’t be angry—wouldn’t it be better not to speak so? I don’t like—I mean Anne Ross does not like—she says it makes foolish people laugh, and be impertinent.”
Miss Falconer’s face became crimson. Miss Falconer drew up her tall, handsome figure, to its full height, and looked haughty for a moment. Alice was afraid.
“There! that will do. You will be able to give gentle reproofs, by-and-by, beautifully: only you must not experiment on me much, you know, lest I should grow angry. No, no; do not lift up those blue eyes of yours so pitifully. I am not angry now—but I am sometimes, and I should not like you to see me so.”
The straightforward little Alice looked up in wonder, fancying that the blunt, strong, unschooled mind beside her, might be in the habit of giving way to ungovernable and wild fits of passion, such as she had read of; it was all a mistake. Marjory Falconer was by no means so rude and unfeminine as she gave herself credit for being, and had bitter compunctions of outraged delicacy sometimes, after those masculine speeches, which revenged her womanhood completely. But the little world of Strathoran did not know that—did not know either how the strong and healthful spirit of the motherless, ill-educated girl was forcing itself through a rough process of development, and, like other strong plants, was rank and wild in its growth, and needed vigorous pruning—pruning which it would not fail, by-and-by, to manage for itself, with an unhesitating hand.
So the youthful people of Strathoran laughed, and the elders hung back, and called her improper and unfeminine; and thus the original evil was increased by the grievance of which she herself complained; she was left to the company of men—men, moreover, of that rude, uncultured, sportsman class, her own superiority over whom she felt bitterly, and asserted with characteristic vehemence.
Alice Aytoun saw, when her visitor was gone, still more visibly than she had done in the morning, that Mrs. Catherine was sad.—She could not help observing the long, wistful looks bestowed upon herself—the hundred little indulgences which Mrs. Catherine gave her that day, as she would have given them to a sick child; and Alice wondered. These steadfast, compassionate looks became painful at last, and there was so great a chill of gravity and sadness about the stranger, Archibald Sutherland, that Alice, carried that tremulous happiness of hers—so much deeper, and yet so much less exuberant than it had been one little month ago—into her own pretty room.
Bessie sat there sewing, and disconsolate. Johnnie Halflin had protested vehemently last night that “the Tower wadna be likeitsel when she gaed away.” The Falcon’s Craig groom had particularly distinguished little Bessie by his notice. Mr. Foreman’s lad from Portoran had bidden her “be sure and come soon back again,” when he shook hands with her. Jacky, with her eldritch voice, had attempted to sing ‘Bessie Bell’ in her honor—and to leave it all! So little Bessie sat sentimental and despondent in the room, with some vision of breaking hearts, and never being happy again, while her youthful mistress sat down by the window, and looked over to Merkland.
Ah! that breadth of hazy air which hovered between the house of Merkland and Alice Aytoun’s chamber window, how full of beautiful shapes it was—and how instinct with gladness! Mrs. Catherine dined at four—never later, except on some very great and solemn occasion; and when dinner was over that day, and the darkness of the long January night had begun, Mrs. Catherine took her youthful kinswoman by the arm, and led her away from the dining-room without speaking. They did not go up stairs; they went away through that dim passage, and stopped at the door of the little room. Alice was terrified. Mrs. Catherine unlocked the door, drew the girl in with her, and closed it again in silence. Alice’s heart began to beat loud, in awe and terror. What strange discipline was this?
There was a fire burning brightly; the waning gloaming without gave the whins, that almost touched the window, a ghostly look. The gray crag above seemed to be looking in with a pale, withered, inquisitive face. Mrs. Catherine seated herself on one of the chairs and bade Alice take the other. The firelight fell warm and bright upon that fine dark portrait on the opposite wall. There was a lamp upon the table, but it was not lighted. Alice sat trembling, silent, apprehensive. What could Mrs. Catherine have to tell her?
“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “do you see that picture?”
“Yes,” said Alice, timidly.
The light was hovering about it, shooting now a spark of radiance into the eye, and now moving in a strange, fantastic smile upon the lip. Alice had heard from some of the visitors at the Tower of Mrs. Catherine’s brother, and knew that this was his portrait.
“Ye ken who it is?—my one brother, Sholto Douglas,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Look at him well. Do you see how strong, and full of health, and strength, and youth that face is, Alison? Look at him well.”
Alice looked again wonderingly at the fine face of Sholto Douglas. To her, as to Archibald Sutherland, it looked loftily calm and pure, removed far above all the changeful hopes and fears of this “pleasing, anxious being.”
“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “I want to tell you the history of Sholto Douglas. Sit quiet, and do not tremble, but listen to me.”
Alice tried not to tremble—she could scarcely help it. The ghostly inquisitive crag, behind which she could fancy some malicious elf watching them—the dark whins pressing close to the window—the dreary sough of the wind as it swept through the bare trees without, and the long passages within, moaning soeerieand spirit-like—the calm, unmoved face looking down from the wall—the comparative gloom of this sacred and mysterious apartment—she could not repress the involuntary thrill of fear and wonder.
“Sholto Douglas was my one brother—we were the sole children of our name,” said Mrs. Catherine, her utterance so slow and marked the while, that it was easy to recognise this as the history of her great sorrow, “and I cannot tell you how dear we were to one another. You are a bairn, yourself, of too gentle and quiet a spirit. You cannot know the loves and griefs of harsher natures.
“We were never separate a day; we were bairns; we grew up into youth; we passed to manhood and to womanhood hand in hand. In his earliest flush of strength and manliness, Sholto was arrested on the way. I am a woman now laden with years, and drawing near to the grave, but, bairn, there is no earthly motive that would rouse me to any work or labor like the remembrance of my brother Sholto, that I left lying in foreign earth, thirty years ago.
“That is not the matter I have to speak of first. When Sholto Douglas was in the strength of his youthful manhood he was trysted in solemn betrothal, whereof I myself was a witness, to Isabel Balfour, the mother of the young man who came to my house last night. She was a gentle, pleasant, gladsome girl, like your own self, Alison Aytoun. I liked her well before for her own sake, and I liked her dearly then for Sholto’s. The day was set for the bridal—the whole kindred were stirred to do them honor—there was nothing in their way, but joy, and blessings, and prosperity, as we thought in our vain hope. Alison! between them there was the stern and sore shadow of death, and they knew it not!
“A week before his bridal day, Sholto came home from Edinburgh a stricken man. I read it in the doctor’s face that came to see him first. I saw it in the blood they took from him, till he was worn and wasted to a shadow. The burning heat of his inflammation was on him the day that should have been his bridal day—and when he rose from that bed it was only to sink into the terrible beauty of decline—with all its dreams of health, and wildhopes, and sick delusions. Be thankful, bairn, that no such weird is laid upon you.
“I saw him dying before me day by day. Into my heart there had never mortal man entered but Sholto, my one brother; and in his prime of youth, with hopes thick about his brow like the clusters of his hair, was the Lord parting him from me. I could not hope—when Isabel leant upon his chair, and looked into his face—his cheek with its bright color, and his glorious e’en—and smiled and rejoiced, and said he would be well, I turned from her, my heart within me sick unto death. I knew he was a doomed man—I saw there was no hope.
“They said at last that the air of some sunnier country would heal him of his trouble, and I prepared for the journey; anxiously I pleaded with Isabel to go with us, that he might have the comfort of her presence. Her kindred would not let her—she thought it not needful herself, neither did he: they would meet again, he said, so soon in health and gladness. I turned away from him—my heart was bursting. I kent they would never meet again—I kent that I took him away to die.
“Alison, I saw the parting of the two. I saw the sick hope in Isabel Balfour’s face, and the wan courage in Sholto’s—their hearts misgave them at that moment. There is a shadow of fear upon all partings, and it was deepened upon theirs. As for me, my sky could not well be darker—it was not fear with me, but a deadly knowledge. I kent they would never meet again.
“And so I went away with him—guarding the young man that had been so strong and healthful, from every blast of wind, as ye would guard a sick bairn. I went with him to Italy—to France—syne when he got no stronger—I took him away to that sunny island in the sea, where so many are sent to die. His doom was upon him—the light was in his eye more glorious than ever, the hectic was burning on his cheek. What was the soft air and the beautiful days, in comparison with the might of death. He died. I saw him laid in the cold earth of a foreign country, far away from the grave of his fathers, and turned in my desolation to come back to my own country, my lane.
“Alison! you do not ken the blackness of darkness, the shadow of that terrible wing of death. Think of it—think of my desolate journey—think of my first parting with my one brother. Could ye have borne a woe like that?”
Alice was weeping—she had forgot herself and Lewis for the moment. Her gentle heart could not fathom the stern depths of suffering, which still swelled in Mrs. Catherine’s larger spirit, but she recognized the sovereignty of grief, and answered with her tears:
“And there was the bride to come home to—the desolate bride,that had been dreaming vain dreams of pleasantness and hope to come. A year before you would have thought that if ever there were two fated to a bountiful and gladsome lot, it was Sholto Douglas and his trysted bride. Now, she was stricken down in her first agony, and he was lying in his stranger grave.
“Know you, Alison, that there are woes like that wherever there are living men?—that there is some shadow on every lot, how fair soever, may be its beginning?—that even the like of you, in your youth and smiles, have a weird to watch and weep through, every one of you for her own self, and not another?”
Alice looked up—the tears stealing over her cheeks, the “hysterica passio” swelling up in its “climbing sorrow” in her tightened breast. Her blue eyes looked fearfully and anxiously in Mrs. Catherine’s face. This most sad history, Alice felt, was the preface of some personal evil to herself, some misfortune to Lewis. She could not speak—she only looked imploringly in sad fear and wonder into the face of her kinswoman.
“My poor bairn!” said Mrs. Catherine, “you can think how Isabel mourned in her dark solitude? ye can feel for Isabel?”
Alice started up, all her gay hopes and girlish happiness floating away before that blast, as such light things will float, and threw herself unconsciously at Mrs. Catherine’s feet, kneeling there in incoherent grief and terror, and burying her fair head in the lap of her kinswoman: “What is it—what is it? I will bear it—tell me what it is.”
Mrs. Catherine’s hand lay upon her fair hair in grave kindness. Mrs. Catherine bent down. “Alison! wherefore did ye not tell me of this unhappy tryste, that has been made between Lewis Ross and you?”
Alice could not look up; trembling through all her slight figure, she waited for the next words.
“My bairn! my poor fatherless bairn! if there was but any weight on my gray head that could keep off this sore stroke from your’s! It is your appointed weird; ye must be strong, and listen to me. In the fulness of their joy and hope, it pleased the Lord to sunder for ever, in this world, the two I have told you of. Alison! there lies as deadly a bar between Lewis Ross and you; a bar that can never be passed, or lifted away in this life. You may hear of his welfare and prosperity, and he of yours; but in this world you must be strangers. It cannot last a day, this link between you; you cannot go a step further in this perilous road, Alison!”
One great convulsive throb had shaken the slender frame that leant upon Mrs. Catherine’s knee. There was a moment’s pause, and then Alice rose, her tears dashed away, yet still noiselessly welling out, and a momentary flush of womanly pride inspiring her girlish figure. “He might have told me himself,” she exclaimed,passionately. “He need not have been afraid; I—I am not so foolish—I can bear it—my heart will not break; he had no right to think—he might have told me himself!”
Mrs. Catherine rose, and put her arm round her. The girl turned away, and endeavored to release herself; endeavoring vainly also to hide the large hot tears, that, spite of pride and resentment, were falling passionately again.
“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “the youth did not ken himself. I cannot deny him justice, though I have little wish that you should think of him more. He did not know himself. It will fall as heavily on him as it does on you.”
Alice endeavored again to free herself, her tears flowing more gently, and the weight and oppression at once lifted off her youthful heart. So long as change did not come upon either herself or Lewis, what were external obstacles to them, in their triumphant hope and affection? But injured pride, and outraged feelings, made her reject Mrs. Catherine’s offered kindness. Why should she interpose between these two?
“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “listen to me. If Lewis’s heart were brimming full with the greatest love that ever was in the heart of mortal man, and if you yourself were clinging to him as never woman clung before, yet must ye part: there is no hope—no choice. Before ever you were born, there was a deadly bar laid between Lewis Ross and you. It cannot be passed: there is no hand in this world that can lift it away: it is as unchangeable as death. Bairn, I am speaking to you most sorrowfully. I would not, for all my land, have laid this burden on your young head, if there had been either help or choice: there is none. You must be parted. Alison, look at me.”
Alison looked wistfully through her tears at the strongly-marked stern face, now so strangely moved and melted. She saw the steadfast, sorrowful, compassionate look, in which there was no hope; and, yielding to the pressure of the encircling arm, leaned her head upon Mrs. Catherine’s shoulder, and nestled into her breast like a grieved child.
By-and-by, they had returned to their original positions. Mrs. Catherine seated herself in her chair again, and Alice glided down passively, and lay like a broken lily, with her head hidden in Mrs. Catherine’s lap. She was stunned and overpowered. The gentle heart lay in a kind of stupor, a dead and vacant sleep; she hardly felt it beat. The hope, and shame, and anger, the very wonder and grief, seemed gone; yet in her crushed apathy, she listened—the faintest word, uttered near, would not have been lost on the ears so nervously awake to every sound. She was waiting for further confirmation of the strange fate pronounced upon her.
“Are you content?” said Mrs. Catherine, lifting the fair headtenderly in her hand—”are you content to believe me, my poor bairn, and to give up the gladness of your youth? Speak to me, Alison. I have maybe been harsher than I should be with your gentle nature, and I am asking you to make a sore sacrifice. For the sake of your kindly mother, Alice; for the sake of your honorable and upright brother James: for the memory’s sake of your dead father, whom you never saw, I ask you to give up this stranger lad. He was nothing to you three months ago. They have nourished you, and cherished you, all the days of your life. Believe me, Alison, my bairn, that what I have told you is true; and, for their sake, give up this Lewis Ross. The bar between you is deadly and unchangeable: you cannot pass it over, were you to wait a lifetime.”
Alice lifted her wan cheek from Mrs. Catherine’s knee, and looked up with sad, beseeching eyes. “What is it? Tell me what it is?”
“It might do you ill, but it could not do you good,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Take my word, Alison, and give me your promise. It is a thing that cannot change—that nothing in this world can make amends for. Alison, it is your weird—it has been laid on you, to prove what strength you have. You must make the sacrifice, hard though it be.”
“I have not any strength,” murmured poor little Alice, in her plaintive, complaining voice: “I am not strong, and there is no one with me. Mrs. Catherine, what is it? Tell me what it is?”
“Bairn,” said Mrs. Catherine, “you would need to be strong to listen to the story, and I have withheld it to spare you. You are but a frail, young, silly thing, to have such troubles shadowing you; but it may be most merciful, in the end, to let you ken it all. Listen to me.” Mrs. Catherine paused for a moment, and then resumed: “You have heard tell of your father, and how he died a violent death? Alison Aytoun, did you ever hear who it was that killed him?”
Alice shivered, and glanced up in trembling wonder. Mrs. Catherine went on: “The name of him was Norman Rutherford. He was a young man, as gallant and as generous as ever breathed mortal breath. Why he was left to himself in so dreadful a way, I cannot tell. It will never be known on this earth. Alison Aytoun, are you hearing me? Norman Rutherford, your father’s murderer, was the nearest kindred of Lewis Ross; he was his brother!”
A long, low cry of pain, involuntary and unconscious, came from Alice Aytoun’s lips. She turned from Mrs. Catherine’s lap, and covered her face with her hands. There was nothing more to say or to hope; and the mist and film of her first sorrow blinded andstilled the girlish heart, which beat so gay and high when that dull morning rose.
By-and-by, she had wandered up stairs, and was in her own room alone. The room was dim, and cheerless, and cold, she thought; and Alice laid herself down upon her bed, and hid her sad, white face in the pillow, and silently wept. The girlish light heart sank down under its sudden burthen, without another struggle. “I am not strong,” murmured little Alice; “and there is no one with me.”
There was no one with her. Never before had any misfortune come to her youthful knowledge, which could not be shared. Now the shrinking, delicate spirit, half child, half woman, had entered into the very depths of a woe which must be borne alone. The dull, leaden darkness gathered round her; the tears flowed over her white cheek in a continuous stream; and into the dim, disconsolate air the plaintive young voice sounded sadly, instinctively calling on its mother’s name. Alice was alone!
WHENAnne entered Merkland after her visit to the nurse’s cottage, and was proceeding, as usual to her own room, she was stopped by Duncan.
“Miss Anne,” said Duncan, significantly, “Merkland is in the parlor.”
“Well, Duncan,” said Anne, “what of that? Does Lewis want me?”
“Na, I’m no saying that,” said the cautious Duncan; “but I just thought within mysel that maybe ye were wanting to see the Laird; and he’s in the parlor, and so’s the mistress. Mr. Lewis has been hame this half-hour.”
Anne comprehended. The clouds of the morning had broken into a storm, and Duncan, with whom “Mr. Lewis,” partly as a child of his own training, and partly as the Laird of Merkland, was a person of the very highest importance, and not to be teased and incommoded by “a wheen woman,” desired her interposition to receive the tempest upon her own head, and avert it from Lewis, as was the general wont, when Anne made her appearance in the midst of any quarrel between the mother and son.
“I will return immediately, Duncan,” she said, as she ran up stairs to take off her cloak and bonnet.
Duncan turned away satisfied.
“A wheen, silly, fuils o’ women, as they are a’, the haill sect o’ them,” he soliloquized, fretfully; “wearing the very life and pith out o’the lad, wi’ their angers, and their makings o’. First the one and then the other. Ane would need lang tack o’ patience that ventured to yoke wi’ them, frae Job himsel, honest man, doun to Peter Hislop, the stock farmer at Wentrup Head. ‘Deed, and the twa are in no manner unlike, when ane has a talent for similarities. They were baith rich in cattle, and had a jaud of a wife to the piece o’ them. Clavering, ill-tongued randies, wearing out the lives of peaceable men.”
When Anne entered the room, she found Lewis pacing back and forward in it, in haste and anger, while Mrs. Ross sat leaning back in her chair with the air of a besieger, who has thrown his last bomb, and waits to see its effect.
“I cannot believe it,—I will not believe it!” exclaimed Lewis, as Anne entered. “If it had been so, I should have heard it before. Oh! I know you could not have kept this pleasure from me so long, mother! and I declare to you that this stratagem—I say this unworthy stratagem—only strengthens my determination. Anne,” continued Lewis, perceiving her as he turned, in his hasty progress from one end of the room to the other, “you have heard this story—this phantom of Norman—the murderer, as he is called—which my kind mother has conjured up to frighten me. Join with me in telling her it is not true—that we are not to be deceived—that we do not believe this!”
Mrs. Ross endeavored to toss her head as contemptuously as was her wont—it would not do; the motion was spasmodic. She was reaping the fruit of her own training, and the ingratitude and rude anger of her only son, from whom, indeed, she did not deserve this, stung her to the heart.
“Lewis,” said Anne, “you are behaving very unjustly to your mother. Be calm, and do not give way to anger so unseemly.”
“Oh! do not interrupt him,” said Mrs. Ross, “let him go on; it is pleasant to insult his mother.”
Lewis turned from her angrily.
“This is not a time for any absurd punctilio, Anne. Let me hear you say this is not true—this story—this scheme. I will not submit to it. Am I a boy, I wonder, that I am to be frightened by such a—”
Mrs. Ross rose. The darling son—the only child—to turn on his mother thus!
“Lewis!” she said, her features twitching, her voice husky. “Beware!”
“Lewis!” said Anne; “I cannot bear this either; it is mere madness; sit down quietly and listen. Mother, I beg of you to sit down; forgive him this; he does not know—he cannot comprehend.Lewis, when your mother told you this very terrible story, she believed it true.”
Mrs. Ross had been regarding Anne, whose support she deserved as little as she did the insults of her son, with a face in which wonder and shame were strangely blended. Now she darted up a sharp, keen glance.
“Believedit true! This from you, Anne Ross—this from you!”
“Bear with me, mother,” exclaimed Anne; “and you, Lewis, be still and hear me. I believe with my whole heart that our brother, Norman Rutherford, is innocent of this terrible deed; but, in the judgment of the world, he is condemned long years ago. Every one thinks him guilty. Not your mother only, but Mrs. Catherine, and all who know the story, except myself and one other. Lewis, I do not say how unbecoming and unnatural this passion is, but your mother has only told you, what I have been eager to tell you through all these anxious months. So far as common belief goes, you have heard rightly.”
“But it is not true,” said Lewis, doggedly, throwing himself into a chair; “you admit it is not true. A scheme—a—”
“Mother, leave this to me,” cried Anne, trembling as she saw the contortion of Mrs. Ross’s face. “It is no scheme, Lewis. You do us cruel wrong in using such a word. It is true in every particular, but in the one which has given it all its bitterness to me. It is not true that Norman is guilty. It is true, that for seventeen years—for all Alice Aytoun’s sunny lifetime—he has been expiating, in a foreign country, the crime of another man. Do not sneer, mother; I cannot bear it. Do not turn away Lewis; I will not be disbelieved. My brother Norman is innocent; the two hearts that knew him, and loved him best, have put their seal upon his truth, one bearing witness in the clearsightedness of nearly approaching death, the other cherishing it in her inmost heart as the one hope of her waning years. Lewis, here is your father’s latest words and testimony. Read it, and believe that it is true.”
“What is true?” exclaimed Lewis, starting up, without, however, taking the letters which Anne held out to him. “What is the meaning of all this, Anne? My mother tells me first, that this Norman killed the father of Alice Aytoun, and then you come in, and tell me all the story is true, and yet that Norman is innocent; what do you mean? I am not to be treated as a schoolboy. I shall not submit to these mysteries; tell me plainly what you mean.”
Anne looked anxiously at Mrs. Ross. “Have you told him all? Does he know all, mother?”
“I don’t understand you, Anne,” said Mrs. Ross, sullenly.
Anne stood between them, baited by both, her patience nearlybreaking down. “Does he know all?” she repeated; “does he know that Norman is alive? Lewis, have you heard that?”
Lewis walked through the room hastily, and did not answer. He had heard it—it was clear; and Anne fancied that, like herself, the thousand apprehensions connected with that secret were overwhelming Lewis, that grief and fear for their unhappy brother were swelling up in his heart, too great for speech.
“Lewis,” she continued, “you ask me what I mean—I will tell you. This morning, and for many a sorrowful and dreary morning before this, I knew the history of Norman, as you know it now. I knew that the stain of a great crime was upon his name. I believed that Alice Aytoun’s father had fallen by his hand. I knew that justice had set its terrible mark upon him, and that the world thought him already dead; yet, all the while, I knew he was alive, still wandering, Cain-like, with his guilt and his condemnation upon his head. Lewis! since Alice Aytoun came to the Tower, this has haunted me night and day, waking and sleeping; it has tinged my every thought and every dream; it has never left my mind for an hour. You thought I wished to put obstacles between Alice Aytoun and you; you were right, I did so. I endeavored in every possible way to keep you separate. I schemed as I never schemed before; you know now the reason. I wanted to preserve you both; to save her young heart from this cloud, and to keep you even from knowing it, because it was your mother’s wish you should not know. Our plans are not the best, and Providence has mercifully baulked mine. Lewis, with you I am sure, as with me, the one circumstance in Norman’s calamity that makes it bitter, is the crime. What happened last night, driving me, as it did, almost to absolute despair, drove me also to exertion. And this morning, I found these precious letters—look at them, Lewis—which clear Norman, and which leave to us my father’s dying charge, to redeem the fame of his unjustly accused son. Lewis, take the letters; they are addressed to you no less than to me, and if we but discharge our trust faithfully, all will be well.”
Something moved by Anne’s earnestness, Lewis took the letters, and sat down to examine them. Anne threw herself, exhausted, into a chair; the mental excitement of the morning, and its sudden transition from despair to hope, had worn her out. Mrs. Ross glanced from the one to the other angrily, and cast keen glances at the yellow tear-blotted letters in her son’s hand. He had laid down his father’s cover, and was reading with kindred keenness, Norman’s incoherent self-defence. The young man’s sharp, cold scrutiny, was little like that of one, whose present happiness depended upon the truth of this; his steady hand, and business-like demeanor, revealed no deeper interest in that cry ofagony, than if its writer had been the merest stranger, and not a much-suffering brother. Anne watched him also, with compressed lips, and anxious eyes; she thought his indifference firmness, or tried to think so, though very differently, she knew, that utterance of Norman’s distress had entered into her own heart.
He finished the letters; but there came no exclamation of hope or thanksgiving from the steady lip of Lewis. He folded them up carefully, and laid them on the table. Anne waited in breathless anxiety. “Well,” he said, coldly, “and what do you think you can make of these?”
“Lewis!” exclaimed Anne.
“Ah! I thought you would be disappointed. It’s not at all wonderful that you should think these letters could do a mighty deal of themselves, for you’ve no experience, you know nothing of the world; and yet, I thought you had better sense, Anne. They’re not worth a rush.”