The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

“This moment, laddie—this instant—ye may trust me!” cried Marget, with a sob; and before Huntley, passing round behind the offices, came in sight of the high road, his messenger had already disappeared on the way to Kirkbride.

Then Huntley drew his cap over his eyes, threw round him a gray shepherd’s plaid, as a partial disguise, and set out in the opposite direction. Before he reached his journey’s end, the sweeping deluge of a thunder storm came down upon those uplands, in white sheets of falling water. The lad did not pause to take shelter, scarcely to take breath, but pushed on till he reached some scattered cottages, where the men were just returning from their day’s work. At that time the rain and the western sun, through the thickness of the thunder cloud, made a gorgeous, lurid, unearthly glow, like what it might make through the smoke of a great battle. Huntley called one of the men to him into a little hollow below the hamlet. He was one of the servants of Norlaw, as were most of these cottagers. The young master told his tale with little loss of words, and met with the hearty and ready assent of his horrified listener.

“I’ll no’ fail ye, Maister Huntley; neither will the Laidlaws. I’ll bring them up by the darkening; ye may reckon upon them and me,” said the laborer; “and what use burdening yoursel’ with mair, unless it were to show respect. There’s enow, with ane of you lads to take turns, and us three.”

“Not at the darkening—at midnight, Willie; or at earliest at eleven, when it’s quite dark,” said Huntley.

“At eleven! mid nicht! I’m no heeding; but what will we say to the wives?” said Willie, scratching his head in momentary dismay.

“Say—but not till you leave them—that you’re coming to serve Norlaw in extremity,” said Huntley; “and to make my brothers and me debtors to your kindness forever.”

“Whisht about that,” said Willie Noble; “mony a guid turn’s come to us out of Norlaw;—and Peggie’s nae like the maist of women—she’ll hear reason. If we can aince win owre Tweed, we’re safe, Maister Huntley; but it’s a weary long way to there. What would you say to a guid horse and a light cart? there’s few folk about the roads at night.”

Huntley shrunk with involuntary horror from the details even of his own arrangement.

“I’ll take care for that,” he said, hurriedly; “but we could not take a carriage over Tweed, and that is why I ask this help from you.”

“And kindly welcome; I wish to heaven it had been a blyther errand for your sake,” said the man, heartily; “but we maun take what God sends; and wha’s to keep the officer quiet, for that’s the chief of the haill plan?”

“I’ve to think of that yet,” said Huntley, turning his face towards home with a heavy sigh.

“I’d bind him neck and heels, and put him in Tyne to cool himsel’!” said Willie, with a fervent effusion of indignation. Huntley only bade him remember the hour, shook his hard hand, and hurried away.

It was a painful, troubled, unhappy evening, full of the excitement of a conspiracy. When Huntley and Patrick communicated with each other it was impossible to say, for they never seemed to meet alone, and Patrick had taken upon himself the hard duty of keeping Elliot company.

The minister and his daughter departed sadly in the twilight, knowing no comfort for the family they left. And Mr. Blackadder returned gloomily from his visit to the attorney, bringing the news that he had no authority to stop proceedings till he consulted with his principal, after which, in good time, and with a look and grasp of Huntley’s hand, which were full of meaning, the good farmer, too, took his wife away.

Then came the real struggle. The officer kept his watch in the dining-room, to which he had shifted from some precautionary notion, and sat there in the great chintz easy-chair, which the hearts of the lads burned to see him occupy, perfectly content to talk to Patie, and to consume soberly a very large measure of toddy, the materials for which stood on the table the whole evening. Patie discharged his painful office like a hero. He sat by the other side of the table, listening to the man’s stories, refusing to meet Huntley’s eye when by chance he entered the room, and taking no note of the reproachful, indignant glances of Cosmo, who still knew nothing of their plans, and could not keep his patience when he saw his brother entertaining this coarse intruder in their sorrowful affairs.

Huntley, meanwhile, moved about stealthily, making all the arrangements. It was a considerable discouragement to find that the officer had made up his mind to spend the night in the dining-room, where Marget, with a swell and excitement in her homely form, which, fortunately, Elliot’s eyes were not sufficiently enlightened to see, prepared the hair-cloth sofa for his night’s repose. He was sober, in spite of the toddy, but it seemed more than mortal powers could bear, keeping awake.

It was midnight; and Huntley knew by Marget’s face that his assistants were in attendance, but still they scarcely ventured to say to each other that every thing was ready for their melancholy office.

Midnight, and the house was still. Yet such a perturbed and miserable stillness, tingling with apprehension and watchfulness! The widow had left her sorrowful retirement up-stairs; she stood outside on the gallery in the darkness, with her hands clasped close together, keeping down all natural pangs in this unnatural hardship. Marget, who was strong and resolute, stood watching breathless at the closed door of the dining-room, with a great plaid in her hands, which nobody understood the occasion for. No one else was to be seen, save a train of four black figures moving noiselessly up the stairs. At every step these midnight emissaries took, Marget held her breath harder, and the Mistress clasped her hand upon her heart with an agonizing idea that its throbs must be heard throughout the house. A single faint ray of light directed their way to the room where the dead lay; all beside was in the deepest darkness of a stormy night—and once more with a merciful noise pattering loud upon the trees without, came down the deluge of the thunder storm.

It was at this moment that Cosmo, sitting in his own room, trying to compose his heart with a chapter in his Bible, saw, for he could not hear, his door open, and Huntley’s face, pale with agitation, look in.

“Come!” said the elder brother, who was almost speechless with strong excitement.

“Where?” cried the amazed boy.

Huntley held up his hand to bar speaking.

“To bury my father,” he answered, with a voice which, deep in solemn meaning, seemed, somehow, to be without common sound, and rather to convey itself to the mind, than to speak to the ear.

Without a word, Cosmo rose and followed. His brother held him fast upon the dark gallery, in a speechless grip of intense emotion. Cosmo could scarcely restrain the natural cry of terror, the natural sob out of his boy’s heart.

It went down solemnly and noiselessly, down the muffled stair, that something, dark and heavy, which the noiseless figures carried. At the foot of the stairs, Patie, his own pale face the only thing there on which the light fell fully, held with a steady, patient determination, and without a tremble, the little rush light, hid in a lantern, which guided their descent, and in the darkness above stood the Mistress, like a figure in a dream, with her hands pressed on her heart.

Then a blast of colder air, a louder sound of the thunder-rain. The two brothers stole down stairs, Huntley still holding fast by Cosmo’s arm—and in another moment the whole procession stood safe and free, in the garden, under the blast of big rain and the mighty masses of cloud. So far, all was safe; and thus, under shelter of the midnight, set forth from his sad house, the funeral of Norlaw.

CHAPTER VIII

That night was a night of storms. When the heavy rain ceased, peals of thunder shook the house, and vivid lightning flashed through the darkness. When the funeral procession was safe, Marget fastened her plaid across the door of the dining-room as a precaution, and went up stairs to attend to the Mistress. She found the widow kneeling down, where she had stood, leaning her hands and her face against the railings of the gallery, not fainting, perfectly conscious, yet in a condition in comparison with which a swoon would have been happiness. Her hands clung tight and rigid about the rails. She had sunk upon her knees from pure exhaustion, and kept that position for the same reason. Yet she was terribly conscious of the approach of Marget, afraid of her in the darkness, as if she were an enemy. The faithful servant managed to rouse her after great pains, and at last was able to lead her down stairs, to the gathered fire in the kitchen, where the two sat in the darkness, with one red spark of fire preserving some appearance of life in the apartment, listening to the blast of rain against the window, watching the flashes of wild light which blazed through the three round holes in the kitchen shutter, and the thunder which echoed far among the distant hills. Sitting together without a word, listening with feverish anxiety to every sound, and fearing every moment that the storm must wake their undesired inmate, who could not stir in the dining-room without their hearing. It was thus the solemn night passed, lingering and terrible, over the heads of the women who remained at home.

And through that wild summer midnight—through the heavy roads, where their feet sank at every step, and the fluttering ghostly branches on the hedgerows, which caught the rude pall, a large black shawl, which had been thrown over the coffin—the melancholy clandestine procession made its way. When they had gone about half a mile, they were met by the old post-chaise from the Norlaw Arms, at Kirkbride, which had been waiting there for them. In it, relieving each other, the little party proceeded onward. At length they came to Tweed, to the pebbly beach, where the ferryman’s boat lay fastened by its iron ring and hempen cable. But for the fortunate chance of finding it here, Huntley, who was unrivaled in all athletic exercises, had looked for nothing better than swimming across the river, to fetch the boat from the other side. Rapidly, yet reverently, their solemn burden was laid in the boat; two of the men, by this time, had ventured to light torches, which they had brought with them, wrapt in a plaid. The rain had ceased. The broad breast of Tweed “grit” with those floods, and overflowing the pebbles for a few yards before they reached the real margin of the stream, flowed rapidly and strongly, with a dark, swift current, marked with foam, which it required no small effort to strike steadily across. The dark trees, glistening with big drops of rain—the unseen depths on either side, only perceptible to their senses by the cold full breath of wind which blew over them—the sound of water running fierce in an expanded tide; and as they set out upon the river, the surrounding gleam of water shining under their torches, and the strong swell of downward motion, against which they had to struggle, composed altogether a scene which no one there soon forgot. The boat had to return a second time, to convey all its passengers; and then once more, with the solemn tramp of a procession, the little party went on in the darkness to the grave.

And then the night calmed, and a wild, frightened moon looked out of the clouds into solemn Dryburgh, in the midst of her old monkish orchards. Through the great grass-grown roofless nave, the white light fell in a sudden calm, pallid and silent as death itself, yet looking on like an amazed spectator of the scene.

The open grave stood ready as it had been prepared this morning—a dark, yawning breach in the wet grass, its edge all defined and glistening in the moonlight. It was in one of the small side chapels, overgrown with grass and ivy, which are just distinguishable from the main mass of the ruin; here the torches blazed and the dark figures grouped together, and in a solemn and mysterious silence these solitary remains of the old house of God looked on at the funeral. The storm was over; the thunder clouds rolled away to the north; the face of the heavens cleared; the moon grew brighter. High against the sky stood out the Catherine window in its frame of ivy, the solitary shafts and walls from which the trees waved—and in a solemn gloom, broken by flashes of light which magnified the shadow, lay those morsels of the ancient building which still retained a cover. The wind rustled through the trees, shaking down great drops of moisture, which fell with a startling coldness upon the faces of the mourners, some of whom began to feel the thrill of superstitious awe. It was the only sound, save that of the subdued footsteps round the grave, and the last heavy, dreadful bustle of human exertion, letting down the silent inhabitant into his last resting-place, which sounded over the burial of Norlaw.

And now, at last, it was all over; the terrible excitement, the dismal, long, self-restraint, the unnatural force of human resentment and defiance which had mingled with the grief of these three lads. At last he was in his grave, solemnly and safely; at last he was secure where no man could insult what remained of him, or profane his dwelling-place. As the moon shone on the leveled soil, Cosmo cried aloud in a boyish agony of nature, and fell upon the wet grass beside the grave. The cry rang through all the solemn echoes of the place. Some startled birds flew out of the ivied crevices, and made wild, bewildered circles of fright among the walls. A pang of sudden terror fell upon the rustic attendants; the torch bearers let their lights fall, and the chief among them hurriedly entreated Huntley to linger no longer.

“A’s done!” said Willie Noble, lifting his bonnet reverently from his head. “Farewell to a good master that I humbly hope’s in heaven lang afore now. We can do him nae further good, and the lads are timid of the place. Maister Huntley, may I give them the word to turn hame?”

So they turned home; the three brothers, last and lingering, turned back to life and their troubles—all the weary weight of toil which he had left on their shoulders, for whom this solemn midnight expedition was their last personal service. The three came together, hand in hand, saying never a word—their hearts “grit” like Tweed, and flowing full with unspeakable emotions—and passed softly under the old fruit trees, which shed heavy dew upon their heads, and through the wet paths which shone in lines of silver under the moon; Tweed, lying full in a sudden revelation of moonlight, one bank falling off into soft shadows of trees, the other guarding with a ledge of rock some fair boundary of possession, and the bubbles of foam gleaming bright upon the rapid current, was not more unlike the invisible gloomy river over which they passed an hour ago, than was their own coming and going. The strain was out of their young spirits, the fire of excitement had consumed itself, and Norlaw’s sons, like lads as they were, were melting, each one silently and secretly, into the mood of tears and loving recollections, the very tenderness of grief.

And when Marget took down the shutter from the window, to see by the early morning light how this night of watching had at last taken the bloom from the Mistress’ face, three other faces, white with the wear of extreme emotion, but tender as the morning faces of children, appeared to her coming slowly and calmly, and with weariness, along the green bank before the house. They had not spoken all the way. They were worn out with passion and sorrow, and want of rest—even with want of food—for these days had been terrible days for boys of their age to struggle through. Marget could not restrain a cry of mingled alarm and triumph. That, and the sound of the bolts withdrawn from the door, did what the thunder storm could not do. It broke the slumbers of the sheriff’s officer, who had slept till now. He ran to the window hastily, and drew aside the curtain—he saw the face of the widow at the kitchen-door; the lads, travel-soiled and weary, with their wet clothes and exhausted faces, coming up to meet her; and the slumbrous sentinel rushed out of the room to entangle himself in the folds of Marget’s plaid, and overwhelm her with angry questions; for she came to his call instantly, with a pretense of care and solicitude exasperating enough under any circumstances.

“Where have the lads been?” cried Elliot, throwing down at her, torn through the middle, the plaid which she had hung across his door.

“They’ve been at their father’s funeral,” said Marget, solemnly, “puir bairns!—through the storm and the midnicht, to Dryburgh, to the family grave.”

The man turned into the room again in a pretended passion—but, sheriff’s officer though he was, perhaps he was not sorry for once in his life to find himself foiled.

CHAPTER IX

“Put on your bonnet, Katie, and come with me—the like of you should be able to be some comfort to that poor widow at Norlaw,” said Dr. Logan to his daughter, as they stood together in the manse garden, after their early breakfast.

After the storm, it was a lovely summer morning, tender, dewy, refreshed, full of the songs of birds and odors of flowers.

Katie Logan was only eighteen, but felt herself a great deal older. She was the eldest child of a late marriage, and had been mother and mistress in the manse for four long years. The minister, as is the fate of ministers, had waited long for this modest preferment, and many a heavy thought it gave him to see his children young and motherless, and to remember that he himself was reaching near the limit of human life; but Katie was her father’s comfort in this trouble, as in most others; and it seemed so natural to see her in full care and management of her four little brothers and sisters, that the chances of Katie having a life of her own before her, independent of the manse, seldom troubled the thoughts of her father.

Katie did not look a day older than she was; but she had that indescribable elder-sister bearing, that pretty shade of thoughtfulness upon her frank face, which an early responsibility throws into the looks of very children. Even a young wife, in all the importance of independent sway, must have looked but a novice in presence of the minister’s daughter, who had to be mistress and mother at fourteen, and had kept the manse cosy and in order, regulated the economies, darned the stockings, and even cut out the little frocks and pinafores from that time until now. Katie knew more about measles and hooping-cough than many a mother, and was skilled how to take a cold “in time,” and check an incipient fever. The minister thought no one else, save his dead wife, could have managed the three hundred pounds of the manse income, so as to leave a comfortable sum over every year, to be laid by for “the bairns,” and comforted himself with the thought that when he himself was “called away,” little Johnnie and Charlie, Colin and Isabel, would still have Katie, the mother-sister, who already had been their guardian so long.

“I’m ready, papa!” said Katie; “but Mrs. Livingstone does not care about a stranger’s sympathy. It’s no’ like one belonging to herself. She may think it very kind and be pleased with it, in a way; but it still feels like an interference at the bottom of her heart.”

“She’s a peculiar woman,” said Dr. Logan, “but you are not to be called a stranger, my dear: and it’s no small pleasure to me, Katie, to think that there are few houses in the parish where you are not just as welcome as myself.”

Katie made no reply to this. She did not think it would much mend the matter with the Mistress to be reckoned as one of the houses in the parish. So she tied on her bonnet quietly, and took her father’s arm, and turned down the brae toward Norlaw; for this little woman had the admirable quality of knowing, not only how to speak with great good sense, but how to refrain.

“I’m truly concerned about this family,” said Dr. Logan; “indeed, I may say, I’m very much perplexed in my mind how to do. A state of things like this can not be tolerated in a Christian country, Katie. The dead denied decent burial! It’s horrible to think of; so I see no better for it, my dear, than to take a quiet ride to Melmar, without letting on to any body, and seeing for myself what’s to be done with him.”

“I don’t like Mr. Huntley, papa,” said Katie, decidedly.

“That may be, my dear; but still, I suppose he’s just like other folk, looking after his own interest, without meaning any particular harm to any body, unless they come in his way. Oh, human nature!” said the minister; “the most of us are just like that, Katie, though we seldom can see it; but there can be little doubt that Melmar was greatly incensed against poor Norlaw, who was nobody’s enemy but his own.”

“And his sons!” said Katie, hastily. “Poor boys! I wonder what they’ll do?” This was one peculiarity of her elder-sisterly position which Katie had not escaped. She thought it quite natural and proper to speak of Patie and Huntley Livingstone, one of whom was about her own age, and one considerably her senior, as the “boys,” and to take a maternal interest in them; even Dr. Logan, excellent man, did not see any thing to smile at in this. He answered with the most perfect seriousness, echoing her words:—