Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

“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 ye my 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 life he grew. 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 a stepmother, 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’ them when 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. My e’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 you that 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 said they, 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.

CHAPTER XII

LEWIS ROSS found 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 certainly was conscious 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 decidedly de trop in 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.