Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

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’s entree into 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 sick bewilderment, 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 – even yonder. 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:

“That man hath perfect blessedness,
Who walketh not astray.”

The first verse was repeated, and Lilie stayed to remember the second.

“Eh,” cried Mrs. Melder, “hasna she come uncommon fast on? but I wish ye would speak to Jacky Morison, Miss Anne, she’s learning the bairn nonsense ballants and – ”

“He shall be like a tree that grows,
Near planted by a river,”

burst out Lilie triumphantly.

“Which in his season yields his fruit,
And his leaf fadeth never.
And all he doth shall prosper well – ”

The child paused – accomplished the next three lines with prompting, and then made a stop.

“Lilie no mind now – Lilie show you the tree.”

Anne suffered herself to be drawn out – the tree which Lilie fancied must be the one meant in the Psalm, was an oak which stood upon a swelling hillock close by the Oran. When they came near, the child’s wandering attention was caught by some carving on the rude and gnarled trunk.

“What’s that?” she asked.