Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

Mrs. Catherine rose, and went to the window. The sky was heavy and dark, lowering like some great gloomy forehead. It was laden with snow – large, dilated flakes, like those of fire upon Dante’s burning sand were falling one by one, upon the white earth. It was a feeding storm.

“Bonnie weather for the sea-side,” said Mrs. Catherine, returning to her seat. “You must go with a good excuse, child, not with an apparent falsehood on your tongue. ‘February fills the dyke, either with black or white.’ We are getting both of them this month. March is a blustering, wintry time, when there is little to be seen or heard tell of about the coast but shipwreck and disaster. April is pleasant in a landward place. You may go in April; it is too soon, but for the necessity’s sake you may go then – not a day sooner, at your peril. You are able and well? I understand your look, child – hold your peace. I would give a good year of my life – and I have few of them to spare, seeing I am trysted to abide in my present tabernacle, if the Lord will tell Archie Sutherland has won back his land – to see Norman Rutherford a free man on Oranside again; but I will not consent to put you in peril, child, for any prospective good. I say you shall go in April. I put my interdict upon you venturing before. I will give you your freedom in the last blast of the borrowing days. Not an hour sooner. Now, will you abide by my judgment, or will you not?”

Anne looked out uneasily. The heavy sky slowly beginning to discharge its load – the earth everywhere covered with that white, warm mantle – the gradually increasing storm. She submitted. Now, at least, it was impossible to go.

Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Catherine took her into another room, and interrogated her concerning her pecuniary arrangements for the journey. Anne evaded the question, laughed at the scanty family of shillings in her own purse, and spoke of Lewis.

“Child, you are a gowk after all,” said Mrs. Catherine. “The lad needs all his siller for himself. If there is anything to spare, let him use it on bonnie dies to dress his little bride withal – though the bairn Alison has a natural grace, and needs them less than most. But if you say a word about siller to Lewis, you shall never enter my door again. Mind! It is my wont to keep my word.”

Within a week after this conversation, the last half of Mrs. Catherine’s prodigal outfit was hurriedly sent to Glasgow, where Archibald Sutherland had made his first beginning with success and honor. The cold lodging, to whose narrow and solitary fireside he returned, night after night alone – the fat, Glasgow landlady, whose broad, good-humored face began to smile upon him with a familiar kindliness, which the broken laird blamed himself for almost shrinking from – the life of strange labor – he was getting accustomed to them all.

The house which he had entered was a great one. The senior partner, Mr. Sutor, a man of good mercantile descent, and capital business head, lived at a considerable distance from Glasgow, in one of those magnificent solitudes of hill and water, whither the merchants of St. Mungo are wont to carry their genial wealth, and their fine houses. It was within convenient distance of the “Saut Water,” that irresistible temptation and delight of every genuine Glaswegian. Mr. Sutor came up frequently to business; he was still the active sagacious head of his extensive establishment. The manager, Mr. George Lumsden, was as great a man in his way. He lived in the dignified vicinity of Blytheswood Square. He had a fine house, a well-dressed pretty wife, and beautiful children; gave good dinners; visited baillies and town-councillors, and had baillies and town-councillors visiting him, and was certain in a very short time, to have his respectable name introduced into the firm. He was moreover an active, intelligent man, almost intellectual in spite of those absorbing cares of business, and worthy to call the minister of Portoran brother. Had Archibald chosen, he might have made a tolerably good entre into the society of Glasgow, in the hospitable house of Mr. Lumsden; but Archibald did not choose. His former folly, illness, and repentance had both sobered and saddened him, and he desired to avoid society – a desire which Mr. Lumsden kindly perceived; and after one or two unhappy evenings, during which the sensitive young man had endured in exquisite pain “the pity of the crowd,” and suffered the sympathy of indifferent strangers, Mr. Lumsden forbore pressing further invitations upon him.

Messrs. Sutor and Sinclair’s office was filled with young men – very young men, most of them – adventurous scions of commercial Glasgow families, foredoomed to push their fortunes, and to push them successfully in every quarter of the globe. Youths who made immense havoc among “grossets,” strawberries, and all other delicacies of the luxurious summer-time, sacred to Clydesdale orchards, and radiant with the crowning glory of the Saut Water; nor in the gloomier season did less execution among edibles and drinkables, by no means so delicate or innocent – uproarious, laughter loving, practical-joking youths, among whose noisy conclave Archibald Sutherland sat silent, grave, and sad, in strange solitude.

Thoroughly respectable they would all be by-and-by, on English ‘Change and foreign market-place, and home counting-house – men who could lose some few thousands without much discomposure, and whose custom was to win them in tens and twenties. Yet one could pass so lightly over these ruddy faces, to rest upon that pale one among them, with its secret history – its grief – its hope – altogether forgetful that this was a hired clerk, and that the cubs were young gentlemen, taken in at nominal salaries, to learn their craft, and saving Mr. Sutor no inconsiderable annual sum in the salaries of other hired clerks, whose services his great business must have demanded but for them.

But Archibald discharged his duty well: so well, that Mr. Lumsden formally pronounced his satisfaction – shortened his probation – and when he had been but a month in the Glasgow counting-house, bade him prepare immediately for his voyage. Archibald did so: wrote a long letter, and received a short note of leave-taking from his sister Isabel – the much-admired and gay Mrs. Duncombe – packed up his great outfit, placed in his pocketbook Mrs. Catherine’s long letter of pithy counsel and tender kindliness; with these few words of grave farewell from Merkland; and on a heavy day in February, took his last look of the fair West Country, and its beautiful Clyde, and set sail for the New World.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. Lumsden, of Portoran, was seated in his study. The March wind was blustering boisterous and rude without, driving its precious dust, so valuable, as the proverb says, to farmer and seedsman, upon the window. The study of the Portoran Manse was by no means a luxurious place – there were no reclining library chairs in it: the formidable volumes that clothed its walls were such as no dilettanti student would venture to engage withal. Its furniture was of the plainest. One large respectable looking glazed bookcase, and a multitude of auxiliary shelves, were piled to overflowing with books – books worth one’s while to look at, though Russian leather and gilding were marvellously scant among them. That glorious row of tall vellum-covered folios – Miss Lumsden tells a story of them – how they were presented to her studious brother John, the day he was licensed, by a wealthy elder (to whom be all honor and laud, and many followers;) and how John, in the mightiness of his glee, forgetful of the new dignity of his Reverend, fairly danced round the ponderous volumes in overbrimming pride and exultation. Miss Lumsden’s studious brother John, sits listening the while, with his own peculiar smile upon his face – a smile which gives to that dark, penetrating, intellectual countenance a singular fascination – there is something in the simplicity of its glee, which at once suits so well and contrasts so strangely with his strong and noble character.

For Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran, was altogether a peculiar man; we are sorry that we cannot venture to call him a type of the clergymen of Scotland; he was not a type of any body or profession. You will find rare individuals of his class here and there, but nowhere many. That there were such things as fatigue and weariness, Mr. Lumsden knew – he had heard of them, with the hearing of the ear, and believed in their existence as on good testimony we believe that there are mountains in the moon; but Mr. Lumsden regarded people who complained much of these with a smile, half-pitying, half-incredulous, and met the idea of himself suffering from them with a no less amused burst of open wonder than if it had been suggested to him that he should hold a diet of examination, on some chill hillside of the pale planet over us. The laborious duties of a brave and faithful minister were very life and breath to Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran – obstacles that discouraged every other man did only pleasantly excite and stimulate his patient might of labor. Weary work, from which all beside him turned disconsolate and afraid, Mr. Lumsden swept down upon, his face radiant with all its frank simplicity of glee. Nothing daunted the mighty, vigorous, healthful soul within him – nothing cast down that great, broad, expansive power of Hope, which was with him no fair beguiling fairy, but an athletic spirit, greedy of labor as the elfin serving-man of Michael Scot. In labors manifold the minister of Portoran spent his manly days; foremost in every good work, valiantly at the head of every Christian enterprise, and full of that high religious chivalry which dares all things in the service of the Church and of the Church’s Head.

The widow and the fatherless knew well the firm footstep of their faithful friend and comforter; the poor of his parish claimed his kindly service as a public property; no man seeking counsel or help, comfort or assistance, went doubtingly to the Manse of Portoran. The minister – his wisdom, his influence, his genial large heart, belonged to the people; he was the first person sought in misfortune, the first to whom sorrow was unfolded. In a great joy the people of Portoran might forget him – they never forgot to warn him of the coming of grief.

Mr. Lumsden was seated in his study – a great quarto of ponderous Latin divinity, the produce of that busy time after the Reformation, when divines did write in quarto and folio volumes, terrible to look upon in these degenerate days, lay on the table before him. He was not reading it, however; he was pulling on his boot, and looking at an open note which lay upon the book.

One boot was already on – he was tugging at the other indignantly. Mr. Lumsden was particularly extravagant in that article of boots – so much so, as entirely to shock his prudent sister Martha. This one, which would not be drawn on, had been out during the night, upon its master’s foot, trudging through all manner of wet by-ways to a sick-bed – it had not yet recovered the drenching. So Mr. Lumsden pulled, and between the pulls looked at the note, and muttered to himself words which his correspondent would not have cared to hear.

Miss Lumsden entered the study. Miss Lumsden had seen out her fortieth winter; for the last ten of these, she had worn one constant dress of black silk, and pronounced herself an old woman; and as it was very much for the benefit of her married sisters and unmarried brothers that she should think so, no one contradicted her. It happened at this time, to be John’s turn to have the noted housekeeper of the Lumsden family resident with him. The Manse of Gowdenleas in the rich plains of Mid Lothian, and the Manse of Kilfleurs in the West Highlands, the respective residences of her brothers, Robert and Andrew, were under an interregnum. Mrs. Edie nee Lumsden, in her Fife Manse, had no expectation of a new baby; Mrs. Gilmour the Edinburgh physician’s wife, had no sickness among her seven children; Mrs. Morton, the great invalid, whose husband held an office in the Register House was much better than could be expected; so the universally useful sister Martha had time to bestow her care and attention upon the domestic comfort of her brother John.

The boot suddenly relaxed as Miss Lumsden entered, and the shock brought out her brother’s muttering in a louder tone than he intended: “A pretty fellow!”

“Who is that?” asked his sister.

Mr. Lumsden looked up, flushed with exertion. “This lord at Strathoran. Take his note – a seemly thing indeed to write so to me; Marjory Falconer is right after all – the man thinks himself a Highland chieftain.”

Miss Lumsden read the note, wonderingly.

“Sir.

“My people inform me that you are in the habit of visiting my tenants at Oranmore, and inciting them to a course of action quite subversive of my plans. I am informed that the glen is in the parish of Strathoran, and consequently under the charge of another clergyman – the Rev. Mr. Bairnsfather – whose own good sense and proper feeling have withheld him from any interference between myself and my dependants. I am not inclined to submit to any clerical meddling, and therefore beg to remind you, that as Oranmore is not under your charge, any interference on your part is perfectly uncalled for and officious. I do not choose to have any conventicles in the glen, and trust that you will at once refrain from visits, which may injure the people but can do them no good.

    “I am, &c.
    “Gillravidge.”

“Did ever any mortal hear such impertinence?” exclaimed the amazed Miss Lumsden.

“His people!” said the minister: “they have been his a long time to be so summarily dealt with as goods and chattels. The man must have got his ideas of Scotland from ‘Waverley,’ and thinks he is a Glennaquoich and at the head of a clan – what absurd folly it is!”

“And just, ‘Sir!’ ” said Miss Lumsden, indignantly; “he might have had the good breeding to call you ‘Reverend’ at least.”

Mr. Lumsden laughed. He rose and changed the long black garment, once a great-coat, now his study-coat and morning-undress, for habiliments better suiting the long ride he was about to commence, twisted his plaid round his neck, and shut his quarto.

“What do you intend to do, John?” asked Miss Lumsden. “Are you going out?”

“I intend to do just what I should have done, had I not received this polite note,” said Mr. Lumsden. “I am going to Oranmore, Martha. This lordling threatens to eject these hapless Macalpines, and poor Kenneth, the widow’s son, is on the very verge of the grave. I must see him to-day. If they attempt to remove him, it will kill the lad.”

“Remove them, John? what are you thinking of?” said Miss Lumsden: “it is nearly three months yet to the term.”

The minister shook his head.

“They were warned to quit at Martinmas, Martha. This man, Lord Gillravidge, has his eyes open to his own advantage. He has been advised, I hear, to make one great sheep-farm of these exposed hill-lands. The poor little clachan of Oranmore could not believe that those fearful notices were anything but threats to secure the payment of their rent; but now they promise to turn very sad earnest. I do not know what to do.”

“Eject them?” said Miss Lumsden, “bring one of those terrible Irish scenes to our very door – in our peaceable country? John, it’s not possible!”

Mr. Lumsden looked still more serious.

“I fear it is nearly certain, Martha. I met Big Duncan Macalpine on the road last night. He says Lord Gillravidge’s agent and that fellow with the moustache, have been in the glen several times of late; and the ejectment must be accomplished before their seed is sown. At least if they are permitted to remain till after seed-time, the man will not surely have the heart to remove them then. I do not know – it is a very sad business altogether; but we must try to do something better for them than sending them, friendless and penniless, to Canada. We get a trial of all businesses, we ministers, Martha – this is a new piece of work for me.”

The minister’s man stood at the door, holding the minister’s stout, gray pony. Mr. Lumsden left the room. “And a great comfort it is, John my man,” soliloquized his sister, “that your Master has made you able for them all.”

Oranmore was not in Mr. Lumsden’s parish. Mr. Lumsden was, what in those days was called a “Highflyer,” that is, a purely and earnestly evangelical minister – a man who dedicated his whole energies, not to any abstraction of merely beautiful morality – not to amiable respectability, nor temporal beneficence; but in the fullest sense of these solemn words, to the cause and service of Christ. In consequence, Mr. Lumsden was assailed with all the names peculiarly assigned to his class by common consent of the world: sour Presbyterian, gloomy Calvinist, narrow-minded bigot, illiberal Pharisee. The minister of Portoran, like his brethren in all ages, escaped thus the woe denounced by his Master against those of whom all men speak well.

He was a thorough Presbyterian, a sound Calvinist. Men who know, and may rationally judge of these two stately systems of discipline and doctrine, can decide best whether the frank and open pleasantness of Mr. Lumsden’s face belied his faith or no. He was a man of one idea – we confess to that; but the mightiness that filled his mind was great enough to overbrim a universe. It was the Gospel – the Gospel in its infinite breadth of lovingness – the Gospel no less in its restrictions and penalties. His hand did not willingly extend itself in fellowship to any man who dishonored the name of his Divine leader and King. His soul was not sufficiently indifferent to prophesy final blessedness to those who contemned and set at nought the everlasting love of God – so far he was narrow-minded and illiberal, a bigot and a Pharisee.

But it happened that Mr. Lumsden’s co-presbyters on every side were men called, in the emphatic ecclesiastical phraseology of Scotland, “Moderates;” men who wrote sermons and preached them because it was a necessity of their office, not because they had a definite message to deliver from a Lord and Master known and beloved; men who tolerated profanity, and hushed uncomfortable fears, and were themselves so very moderately religious, as to give no manner of offence to that most narrow-minded and illiberal of all bigots, the irreligious world. We mention this, in explanation of a foible of Mr. Lumsden’s, particularly alluded to in the letter of Lord Gillravidge, and the cause of much skirmishing in the Presbytery of Strathoran. Mr. Lumsden had an especial knack of preaching in other people’s parishes.

Not to the neglect of his own – of all kinds of dishonor or ill-fame, Mr. Lumsden held none so grievous as the neglecting or slight performance of any part of that honorable and lofty work of his. Dearly as he loved extraneous labor, the minutest of his own especial parochial duties were looked to first. But all his round of toil gone through; his sermons prepared; his examinations held; himself, heart and mind, at the constant service of his people, Mr. Lumsden thought it no longer necessary to confine his marvellous appetite for work within the limits of Portoran. – There was a heathenish village yonder, growing up in all the rude brutality of rural vice, untaught and uncared for. What matter that the privilege of instructing it belonged to the Reverend Michael Drowsihed? The Reverend Michael awoke out of his afternoon sleep one day in wrath and consternation. Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran, had established a fortnightly sermon, and threatened to set down a daily school, in his own neglected village. What matter, that the half-Gaelic colony of Oranmore, belonged of right to Mr. Bairnsfather? The warm heart of the Minister of Portoran was laboring in the cause of the Macalpines, while Mr. Bairnsfather was “sheughing kail and laying leeks,” in his own Manse garden.

In consequence of which propensity, Mr. Lumsden made a mighty commotion in that ecclesiastical district. Gratefully to his ears, as he wended homeward, came the voice of psalms from peasant-households, whom his faithful service had brought back to the devout and godly habits of their forefathers. Pleasantly before him stood, in rustic bashfulness, the ruddy village children, for whom his care and labors had procured an education of comparative purity; but by no means either grateful or pleasant were those endless battles convulsing his presbytery, shaking study chairs in drowsy Manses, and sweeping in a perfect whirlwind of complaint and reprimand through the Presbytery House of Portoran.

Mr. Lumsden had his failings – we do not deny it. He had no especial shrinking from a skirmish in the Presbytery. He walked to the bar of that reverend court with so very little awe, that the Moderator was well-nigh shocked out of his propriety. He had even been heard irreverently to suggest to the newly-placed Minister of Middlebury, a young brother, who seemed rather inclined to abet him in his rebelion, that it would be better for him to take his place permanently at the bar, than to be called to it at every meeting. He had been reprimanded by the Presbytery, till the Presbytery were tired of reprimanding. Mr. Bairnsfather had carried the case to the Synod, by appeal. The Synod had denounced his irregularities in its voice of thunder. Mr. Lumsden only smiled his peculiar smile of gleeful simplicity, and went on with his labor.

He was going now to Oranmore. The glen of Oranmore lay among the lower heights of the Grampians, a solitary, secluded valley. A small colony of Highlanders, attached to the Strathoran branch of the house of Sutherland, in feudal times, and bearing the ancient name of Macalpine, had settled there, nearly a century before. The patriarchs of the little community still spoke their original Gaelic; but the younger generations, parents and children, approached much more closely to their Lowland neighbors, whose idiom they had adopted. The glen was entirely in their hands, and its fields, reclaimed by their pains-taking husbandry, produced their entire subsistence. Some flocks of sheep grazed on the hillside. There was good pasture land for their cattle, and the various patches of oats and barley, turnips and potatoes, were enough to keep these sturdy cottar families in independent poverty. Whether in other circumstances they might have displayed the inherent indolence which belongs, as men say, to that much belied Celtic race, we cannot tell. But having only ordinary obstacles to strive against – an indulgent landlord, and a kindly factor – the Macalpines had maintained themselves as sturdily as any Saxon tribe of their numbers could possibly have done; and had, what Saxon hamlets in the richer South are not wont to have, a couple of lads from their little clachan at college – one preparing himself for the work of the ministry, and another aspiring to the dignity of an M. D.

In summer time, these peaceful cot-houses, lying on either side of the infant Oran, within the shadow of the hills, with the fair low country visible from the end of the glen, and the stern Grampians rising to the sky above, were very fair to look upon; and the miniature clan at its husbandry, working in humble brotherhood – the link of kindred that joined its dozen families, all inheriting one name and one blood – the purer atmosphere of morality and faith among them – made the small commonwealth of Oranmore a pleasant thing for the mind to rest upon, no less than for the eye.

Mr. Ferguson had never dealt hardly with these honest Macalpines, in regard to the rent of their small holdings. He knew they would pay it when they could, and, in just confidence, he gave them latitude. Unhappily for the Macalpines, one whole half-year’s rent remained unpaid, when the new landlord took the management out of Mr. Ferguson’s kindly hands. The year was a backward year: their crops had been indifferent, and the Macalpines were not ready with their rent at Martinmas.

The consequence was, that these fearful notices to quit were served upon them. Big Duncan Macalpine, a man of very decided character and deep piety – one of that class, who, further north, are called “the men,” – perceived the alien Laird’s intention of removing them at once. The remainder of the humble people, looked upon the notices only as threats, and set to with all industry to make up the rents, and prevent the dread alternative of leaving their homes. They had come there in the time of Laird Fergus, the great-grandfather of Archibald Sutherland. Their ninety-nine year’s lease had expired in the previous year, and had not (for it was Archibald’s dark hour) been renewed, so that now they were the merest tenants at will. Mr. Foreman warned Big Duncan that they might be ejected at any time.

The small community became alarmed. The big wheel was busy in every cottage. Sheep and poultry were being sold; every family was ready to make sacrifices for the one great object of keeping their lands and homes. The sharp, keen, unscrupulous writer whom Lord Gillravidge had employed in Edinburgh, where his over-acuteness had lost him caste and character, had been seen in the glen for three successive days. The Macalpines were smitten with dread. Rumors floated up into their hilly solitude of a great sheep-farmer from the south, who was in treaty for these hill-lands of Strathoran. A shadow fell upon the humble households. The calamity that approached began to shape itself before them. To leave their homes – the glen to which they clung with all the characteristic tenacity of their race – the country for which the imaginative Celtic spirit burned with deep and patriotic love – the national faith, still dearer, and more precious – for a cold, unknown, and strange land, far from their northern birth-place, and their preached Gospel!

Mr. Lumsden’s strong, gray pony was used to all manner of rough roads, and so could climb along the craggy way that led to Oranmore. The minister rode briskly into the glen. His keen and anxious look became suddenly changed as he entered it into one of grief and indignation. He quickened his pace, leaped from the saddle, fastened his pony to a withered thorn, and hastened forward.