Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

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 head tenderly 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 and stilled 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!

CHAPTER XIII

WHEN Anne 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.

“Believed it 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 nearly breaking 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 of agony, 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.”

Anne looked at him in amazement; she would not understand his meaning.

“They prove nothing – nothing in this world,” said Lewis, with some impatience. “An incoherent attempt to deny a crime, which nobody could suppose he would like to acknowledge, and simply my father’s belief, that what his son said was true, to support it; it is quite nonsense, Anne; nothing could be founded upon such things.”

“Yes; I hope you will see the folly of that romantic stuff,” said Mrs. Ross; “a man sacrificing himself entirely, rather than venture to stand a trial! Depend upon it, Anne Ross, your brother Norman had his senses better about him than you; he fled, because he knew that his only chance of escape was in flight, you may take my word for that. And now that you are satisfied, Lewis; now that you have received the testimony of some one you can credit, that your mother has not told you a lie; you will not hesitate, I trust, to take the only honorable step that remains for you, and immediately give up your very foolish engagement with this girl.”