The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

“Aweel, aweel! we’re a’ frail and full of shortcomings,” said the widow; “but naebody kens how kind Norlaw has been to me. My little Tammie’s away somegate about the house now. I thought the bairn’s heart would break when he heard the news first. I’m sure there’s no one hour, night or day, that he wouldna lay down his life for Norlaw.”

“He was aye a kind man and weel likit—most folk are that spend their siller free, and take a’ thing easy,” said Mrs. Mickle, with a sigh which was partly for that weakness of human nature, and partly for the departing spirit.

Then new customers began to come in, and the group dispersed. By this time it was getting late in the afternoon, and John Mellerstone’s wife had to bethink herself of her husband’s supper, and Mrs. Mickle of her evening cup of tea. The sun had begun to slant over the face of the brae opposite to them, brightening the drooping bushes with touches of gold, and glowing upon the white gable wall of the manse, obscured with the wealthy branches of its jargonel tree. The minister was making his way thoughtfully up the path, with his hat over his face a little, and his hands under the square skirts of his coat, never pausing to look down, as was his custom when his mind was at ease. He, too, had been at Norlaw, and his thoughts were still there.

CHAPTER III

The sun was shining into the west chamber at Norlaw. It was the room immediately over the dining-room, a large apartment, paneled and painted in a faint green color, with one window to the front and one to the side of the house. The side window looked immediately upon the old castle, and on the heavy masses of blunt-leaved ivy which hung in wild festoons everywhere from this front of the ruin; and the sun shone in gloriously to the sick chamber, with a strange mockery of the weakness and the sorrow there. This bed was what used to be called a “tent-bed,” with heavy curtains of dark brown moreen, closely drawn at the foot, but looped up about the pillows. At the side nearest the sunshine, the Mistress, whose place had been there for weeks, stood by the bed measuring out some medicine for the sufferer. A fortnight’s almost ceaseless watching had not sufficed to pale the cheek of health, or waste the vigor of this wife, who was so soon to be a widow. Her fresh, middle-aged, matronly bloom, her dress careful and seemly, her anxious and troubled brow, where deep solicitude and hope had scarcely given way to the dread certainty which everybody else acknowledged, made a very strange contrast, indeed, to the wasted, dying, eager face which lay among those pillows, with already that immovable yellow pallor on its features which never passes away; a long, thin hand, wasted to the bone, was on the coverlid, but the sufferer looked up, with his eager, large black eyes toward the medicine glass in his wife’s hand with a singular eagerness. He knew, at last, that he was dying, and even in the solemnity of those last moments, this weak, graceful mind, true to the instincts of its nature, thought with desire and anxiety of dying well.

The three sons of the house were in the room watching with their mother. Huntley, who could scarcely keep still, even in the awe of this shadow of death, stood by the front window, often drawing close to the bed, but unable to continue there. The second, who was his mother’s son, a healthful, ruddy, practical lad, kept on the opposite side of the bed, ready to help his mother in moving the patient. And at the foot, concealed by the curtains, a delicate boy of fifteen, with his face buried in his hands, sat upon an old square ottoman, observing nothing. This was Cosmo, the youngest and favorite, the only one of his children who really resembled Norlaw.

The caprice of change was strong upon the dying man; he wanted his position altered twenty times in half an hour. He had not any thing much to say, yet he was hard to please for the manner of saying it; and longed, half in a human and tender yearning for remembrance, and half with the weakness of his character, that his children should never forget these last words of his, nor the circumstances of his dying. He was a good man, but he carried the defects of his personality with him to the very door of heaven. When, at last, the pillows were arranged round him, so as to raise him on his bed in the attitude he wished, he called his children, in his trembling voice. Huntley came forward from the window, with a swelling heart, scarcely able to keep down the tears of his first grief. Patrick stood by the bed-side, holding down his head, with a stubborn composure—and Cosmo, stealing forward, threw himself on his knees and hid his sobbing in the coverlid. They were all on one side, and on the other stood the mother, the care on her brow blanching into conviction, and all her tremulous anxiety calmed with a determination not to disturb this last scene. It was the last. Hope could not stand before the look of death upon that face.

“My sons,” said Norlaw, “I am just dying; but I know where I am in this strait, trusting in my Saviour. You’ll remember I said this, when I’m gone.”

There was a pause. Cosmo sobbed aloud in the silence, clinging to the coverlid, and Huntley’s breast heaved high with a tumultuous motion—but there was not a word said to break the monologue of the father, who was going away.

“And now you’ll have no father to guide you further,” he continued, with a strange pity for them in his voice. “There’s your mother, at my side—as true a wife and as faithful, as ever a man had for a blessing. Boys, I leave your mother, for her jointure, the love you’ve had for me. Let her have it all—all—make amends to her. Martha, I’ve not been the man I might have been to you.”

These last words were spoken in a tone of sudden compunction, strangely unlike the almost formal dignity of the first part of his address, and he turned his eager, dying eyes to her, with a startled apprehension of this truth, foreign to all his previous thoughts. She could not have spoken, to save his life. She took his hand between hers, with a low groan, and held it, looking at him with a pitiful, appealing face. The self-accusation was like an injury to her, and he was persuaded to feel it so, and to return to the current of his thoughts.

“Let your mother be your counselor; she has ever been mine,” he said once more, with his sad, dying dignity. “I say nothing about your plans, because plans are ill adjuncts to a death-bed; but you’ll do your best, every one, and keep your name without blemish, and fear God and honor your mother. If I were to speak for a twelvemonth I could not find more to say.”

Again a pause; but this time, besides the sobs of Cosmo, Patrick’s tears were dropping, like heavy drops of rain, upon the side of the bed, and Huntley crushed the curtain in his hand to support himself, and only staid here quite against his nature by strong compulsion of his will. Whether he deserved it or not, this man’s fortune, all his life, had been to be loved.

“This night, Huntley will be Livingstone of Norlaw,” continued the father; “but the world is fading out of my sight, boys—only I mind, and you know, that things have gone ill with us for many a year—make just the best that can be made, and never give up this house and the old name of your fathers. Me’mar will try his worst against you; ay, I ought to say more; but I’m wearing faint—I’m not able; you’ll have to ask your mother. Martha, give me something to keep me up a moment more.”

She did so hurriedly, with a look of pain; but when he had taken a little wine, the sick man’s eye wandered.

“I had something more to say,” he repeated, faintly; “never mind—your mother will tell you every thing;—serve God, and be good to your mother, and mind that I die in faith. Bairns, when ye come to your latter end, take heed to set your foot fast upon the rock, that I may find you all again.”

They thought he had ended now his farewell to them. They laid him down tenderly, and, with awe and hidden tears, watched how the glow of sunset faded and the evening gray stole in over that pallid face which, for the moment, was all the world to their eyes. Sometimes, he said a faint word to his wife, who sat holding his hand. He was conscious, and calm, and departing. His sins had been like a child’s sins—capricious, wayward, fanciful transgressions. He had never harmed any one but himself and his own household—remorseful recollections did not trouble him—and, weak as he was, all his life long he had kept tender in his heart a child’s faith. He was dying like a Christian, though not even his faith and comfort, nor the great shadow of death which he was meeting, could sublime his last hours out of nature. God does not always make a Christian’s death-bed sublime. But he was fast going where there is no longer any weakness, and the calm of the evening rest was on the ending of his life.

Candles had been brought softly into the room; the moon rose, the night wore on, but they still waited. No one could withdraw from that watch, which it is agony to keep, and yet worse agony to be debarred from keeping, and when it was midnight, the pale face began to flush by intervals, and the fainting frame to grow restless and uneasy. Cosmo, poor boy, struck with the change, rose up to look at him, with a wild, sudden hope that he was getting better; but Cosmo shrunk appalled at the sudden cry which burst as strong as if perfect health had uttered it from the heaving, panting heart of his father.

“Huntley, Huntley, Huntley!” cried the dying man, but it was not his son he called. “Do I know her name? She’s but Mary of Melmar—evermore Mary to me—and the will is there—in the mid chamber. Aye!—where is she?—your mother will tell you all—it’s too late for me.”

The last words were irresolute and confused, dropping back into the faint whispers of death. When he began to speak, his wife had risen from her seat by the bed-side—her cheeks flushed, she held his hand tight, and over the face of her tenderness came an indescribable cloud of mortification, of love aggrieved and impatient, which could not be concealed. She did not speak, but stood watching him, holding his hand close in her own, even after he was silent—and not even when the head sank lower down among the pillows, and the eyes grew dim, and the last hour came, did the watcher resume the patient seat which she had kept so long. She stood by him with a mind disquieted, doing every thing that she could do—quick to see, and tender to minister; but the sacramental calm of the vigil was broken—and the widow still stood by the bed when the early summer light came in over her shoulder, to show how, with the night, this life was over, and every thing was changed. Then she fell down by the bed-side, scarcely able to move her strained limbs, and struck to the heart with the chill of her widowhood.

It was all over—all over—and the new day, in a blaze of terrible sunshine, and the new solitude of life, were to begin together. But her sons, as they were forced to withdraw from the room where one was dead, and one lost in the first blind agony of a survivor, did not know what last pang of a long bitterness that was, which struck its final sting, to aggravate all her grievous trouble, into their mother’s heart.

CHAPTER IV

Those slow days of household gloom and darkness, when death lies in the house, and every thought and every sound still bears an involuntary reference to the solemn inmate, resting unconscious of them all, went slowly over the roof of Norlaw. Sunday came, doubly mournful; a day in which Scottish decorum demanded that no one should stir abroad, even to church, and which hung indescribably heavy in those curtained rooms, and through the unbroken stillness of its leisure, upon the three youths who had not even their mother’s melancholy society to help them through the day. The Mistress was in her own room, closely shut up with her Bible and her sorrow, taking that first Sabbath of her widowhood, a solitary day of privilege and indulgence, for her own grief. Not a sound was audible in the house; Jenny, who could be best spared, and who was somewhat afraid of the solemn quietness of Norlaw, had been sent away early this morning, to spend the Sabbath with her mother, in Kirkbride, and Marget sat alone in the kitchen, with a closed door and partially shuttered window, reading to herself half aloud from the big Bible in her lap. In the perfect stillness it was possible to hear the monotonous hum of her half-whispering voice, and sometimes the dull fall of the ashes on the kitchen hearth, but not a sound besides.

The blinds were all down in the dining-room, and the lower half of the shutters closed. Though the July sun made triumphant daylight even in spite of this, it was such a stifling, closed-in, melancholy light, bright upon the upper walls and the roof, but darkened and close around the lads, that the memory of it never quite passed out of their hearts. This room, too, was paneled and painted of that dull drab color, which middle-class dining-rooms even now delight in; there were no pictures on the walls, for the family of Norlaw were careless of ornaments, like most families of their country and rank. A dull small clock upon the black marble mantel-piece, and a great china jar on the well-polished, old-fashioned sideboard, were the only articles in which any thing beyond use was even aimed at. The chairs were of heavy mahogany and hair-cloth—a portion of the long dining-table, with a large leaf folded down, very near as black as ebony, and polished like a mirror, stood between the front windows—and the two round ends of this same dining-table stood in the centre of the room, large enough for family purposes, and covered with a red and blue table-cover. There was a heavy large chintz easy-chair at the fire-place, and a little table supporting a covered work-basket in the corner window—yet the room had not been used to look a dull room, heavy and dismal though it was to-day.

The youngest boy sat by the table, leaning over a large family Bible, full of quaint old pictures. Cosmo saw the pictures without seeing them—he was leaning both his elbows on the table, supporting his head with a pair of long, fair hands, which his boy’s jacket, which he had outgrown, left bare to the wrists. His first agony of grief had fallen into a dull aching; his eyes were observant of the faintest lines of those familiar wood-cuts, yet he could not have told what was the subject of one of them, though he knew them all by heart. He was fair-haired, pale, and delicate, with sensitive features, and dark eyes, like his father’s, which had a strange effect in contrast with the extreme lightness of his hair and complexion. He was the tender boy—the mother’s child of the household, and it was Cosmo of whom the village gossips spoke, when they took comfort in the thought that only his youngest son was like Norlaw.

Next to Cosmo, sitting idly on a chair, watching how a stream of confined sunshine came in overhead, at the side of the blind, was Huntley, the eldest son. He was very dark, very ruddy, with close curls of black hair, and eyes of happy hazel-brown. Heretofore, Huntley Livingstone’s principal characteristic had been a total incapacity to keep still. For many a year Marget had lamented over him, that he would not “behave himself,” and even the Mistress had spoken her mind only too often on the same subject. Huntley would not join, with gravity and decorum, even the circle of evening visitors who gathered on unfrequent occasions round the fireside of Norlaw. He had perpetually something on hand to keep him in motion, and if nothing better was to be had, would rummage through lumber-room and family treasury, hunting up dusty old sets of newspapers and magazines, risking the safety of precious old hereditary parchments, finding a hundred forgotten trifles, which he had nothing to do with. So that it was rare, even on winter evenings, to find Huntley at rest in the family circle; it was his wont to appear in it at intervals bringing something with him which had no right to be there—to be ordered off peremptorily by his mother with the intruding article; to be heard, all the evening through, knocking in nails, and putting up shelves for Marget, or making some one of the countless alterations, which had always to be made in his own bed-chamber and private sanctuary; and finally, to reappear for the family worship, during which he kept as still as his nature would permit, and the family supper, at which Huntley’s feats, in cutting down great loaves of bread, and demolishing oat-cakes, were a standing joke in the household. This was the old Huntley, when all was well in Norlaw. Now he sat still, watching that narrow blade of sunshine, burning in compressed and close by the side of the blind; it was like his own nature, in those early days of household grief.

Patrick was a less remarkable boy than either of his brothers; he was most like Huntley, and had the same eyes, and the same crisp, short curls of black hair. But Patrick had a medium in him; he did what was needful, with the quickest practical sense; he was strong in his perception of right and justice; so strong, that the Quixotry of boyish enthusiasm had never moved him; he was not, in short, a describable person; at this present moment, he was steadily occupied with a volume of sermons; they were extremely heavy metal, but Patrick went on with them, holding fast his mind by that anchor of heaviness. It was not that his gravity was remarkable, or his spiritual appreciation great; but something was needful to keep the spirit afloat in that atmosphere of death; the boys had been “too well brought up” to think of profaning the Sabbath with light literature; and amusing themselves while their father lay dead was a sin quite as heinous. So Patrick Livingstone read, with a knitted brow, sermons of the old Johnsonian period, and Cosmo pondered the quaint Bible woodcuts, and Huntley watched the sunshine; and they had not spoken a word to each other for at least an hour.

Huntley was the first to break the silence.

“I wish to-morrow were come and gone,” he exclaimed, suddenly, rising up and taking a rapid turn through the room; “a week of this would kill me.”

Cosmo looked up, with an almost feminine reproof in his tearful black eyes.

“Well, laddie,” said the elder brother; “dinna look at me with these e’en! If it would have lengthened out his days an hour, or saved him a pang, would I have spared years to do it? but what is he heeding for all this gloom and silence now?”

“Nothing,” said the second brother, “but the neighbors care, and so does my mother; it’s nothing, but it’s all we can give—and he would have heeded and been pleased, had he thought beforehand on what we should be doing now.”

It was so true, that Huntley sat down again overpowered. Yes, he would have been pleased to think of every particular of the “respect” which belonged to the dead. The closed houses, the darkened rooms, the funeral train; that tender human spirit would have clung to every one of them in his thoughts, keeping the warmth of human sympathy close to him to the latest possibility, little, little though he knew about them now.

“What troubles me is standing still,” said Huntley, with a sigh. “I can not tell what’s before us; I don’t think even my mother knows; I believe it’s worse than we can think of; and we’ve neither friends, nor money, nor influence. Here are we three Livingstones, and I’m not twenty, and we’ve debts in money to meet, and mortgages on the land, and nothing in the world but our hands and our heads, and what strength and wit God has given us. I’m not grumbling—but to think upon it all, and to think now that—that he’s gone, and we’re alone and for ourselves—and to sit still neither doing nor planning, it’s that that troubles me!”

“Huntley, it’s Sabbath day!” said Cosmo.

“Ay, I ken! it’s Sabbath and rest, but not to us,” cried the young man; “here’s me, that should have seen my way—I’m old enough—me that should have known where I was going, and how I was going, and been able to spare a hand for you; and I’m the biggest burden of all; a man without a trade to turn his hand to, a man without knowledge in his head or skill in his fingers—and to sit still and never say a word, and see them creeping down, day by day, and every thing put back as if life could be put back and wait. True, Patie! what would you have me do?”

“Make up your mind, and wait till it’s time to tell it,” said Patie, without either reproof or sympathy; but Cosmo was more moved—he came to his eldest brother with a soft step.

“Huntley,” said Cosmo, in the soft speech of their childhood, “what makes ye speak about a trade, you that are Livingstone of Norlaw? It’s for us to gang and seek our fortunes; you’re the chief of your name, and the lands are yours—they canna ruin you, Huntley. I see the difference mysel’, the folks see it in the country-side; and as for Patie and me, we’ll seek our fortunes—we’re only the youngest sons, it’s our inheritance; but Norlaw, and home, and the name, are with you.”

This appeal had the strangest effect upon Huntley; it seemed to dissipate in an instant all the impatience and excitement of the youth’s grief; he put his arm round Cosmo, with a sudden melting of heart and countenance.

“Do ye hear him, Patie?” cried Huntley, with tears; “he thinks home’s home forever, because the race has been here a thousand years; he thinks I’m a prince delivering my kingdom! Cosmo, the land’s gone; I know there’s not an acre ours after to-morrow. I’ve found it out, bit by bit, though nobody said a word; but we’ll save the house, and the old castle, if we should never have a penny over, for mother and you.”

The boy stared aghast into his brother’s face. The land! it had been Cosmo’s dream by night, and thought by day. The poetic child had made, indeed, a heroic kingdom and inheritance out of that little patrimonial farm. Notwithstanding, he turned to Patie for confirmation, but found no comfort there.

“As you think best, Huntley,” said the second son, “but what is a name? My mother will care little for Norlaw when we are gone, and the name of a landed family has kept us poor. I’ve found things out as well as you. I thought it would be best to part with all.”

“It was almost his last word,” said Huntley, sadly.

“Ay, but he could not tell,” said the stout-hearted boy; “he was of another mind from you or me; he did not think that our strength and our lives were for better use than to be wasted on a word. What’s Norlaw Castle to us, more than a castle in a book? Ay, Cosmo, it’s true. Would you drag a burden of debt at Huntley’s feet for the sake of an acre of corn-land, or four old walls? We’ve been kept down and kept in prison, us and our forbears, because of Norlaw. I say we should go free.”

“And I,” cried Cosmo, lifting his long, white hand in sudden passion, “I, if Huntley does not care for the name, nor for my father’s last wish, nor for the house of our ancestors; I will never rest night nor day, though I break my heart or lose my life, till I redeem Norlaw!”

Huntley, whose arm still rested on the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer, with a look which had caught a tender, sympathetic, half-compassionate enthusiasm from his.

“We’ll save Norlaw for my father’s son,” said the elder brother; and, young as Huntley was, he looked with eyes full of love and pity upon this boy, who inherited more from his father than his name. Huntley had been brought up in all the natural love and reverence of a well-ordered family; he knew there was weakness in his father’s character, beautiful, lovable, tender weakness, for which, somehow, people only seem to like him better. He had not permitted himself to see yet what harm and selfish unconsciousness of others that graceful temperament had hidden. He looked at Cosmo, thinking as a strong mind thinks of that constitution which is called poetic—of the sensitive nature which would shrink from unkindness, and the tender spirit which could not bear the trials of the world; and the lad’s heart expanded over his father’s son.

Patie got up from his chair, and went to the little bookcase in the corner to look for another book of sermons. This boy could not blind his eyes, even with family affection. He loved his father, but he knew plainly, and in so many words, that his father had ruined their inheritance. He could not help seeing that this amiable tenderness bore no better fruit than selfishness or cruelty. He thought it would be right and just to all their hopes to part with even the name of Norlaw. But it was not his concern; he was ready to give his opinion at the proper time, but not to stand out unreasonably against the decision of his elder brother; and when he, too, looked at Cosmo, it was with soberer eyes than those of Huntley—not that he cared less for his father’s son—but Patrick could not help seeing with those clear eyes of his; and what he feared to see was not the sensitive nature and the tender spirit, but the self-regard which lay beneath.

Which of them was right, or whether either of them were right, this history will best show.

CHAPTER V