Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875

THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER

When Malcolm and Joseph set out from Duff Harbor to find the laird, they could hardly be said to have gone in search of him: all in their power was to seek the parts where he was occasionally seen, in the hope of chancing upon him; and they wandered in vain about the woods of Fife House all that week, returning disconsolate every evening to the little inn on the banks of the Wan Water. Sunday came and went without yielding a trace of him; and, almost in despair, they resolved, if unsuccessful the next day, to get assistance and organize a search for him. Monday passed like the days that had preceded it, and they were returning dejectedly down the left bank of the Wan Water in the gloaming, and nearing a part where it is hemmed in by precipitous rocks and is very narrow and deep, crawling slow and black under the lofty arch of an ancient bridge that spans it at one leap, when suddenly they caught sight of a head peering at them over the parapet. They dared not run for fear of terrifying him if it should be the laird, and hurried quietly to the spot. But when they reached the end of the bridge its round back was bare from end to end. On the other side of the river the trees came close up, and pursuit was hopeless in the gathering darkness.

"Laird, laird! they've ta'en awa' Phemy, an' we dinna ken whaur to luik for her," cried the poor father aloud.

Almost the same instant, and as if he had issued from the ground, the laird stood before them. The men started back with astonishment—soon changed into pity, for there was light enough to see how miserable the poor fellow looked. Neither exposure nor privation had thus weighed upon him: he was simply dying of fear. Having greeted Joseph with embarrassment, he kept glancing doubtfully at Malcolm, as if ready to run on his least movement. In few words Joseph explained their quest—with trembling voice and tears that would not be denied enforcing the tale. Ere he had done the laird's jaw had fallen and further speech was impossible to him. But by gestures sad and plain enough he indicated that he knew nothing of her, and had supposed her safe at home with her parents. In vain they tried to persuade him to go back with them, promising every protection: for sole answer he shook his head mournfully.

There came a sudden gust of wind among the branches. Joseph, little used to trees and their ways with the wind, turned toward the sound, and Malcolm unconsciously followed his movement. When they turned again the laird had vanished, and they took their way homeward in sadness.

What passed next with the laird can be but conjectured. It came to be well enough known afterward where he had been hiding; and had it not been dusk as they came down the river-bank the two men might, looking up to the bridge from below, have had it suggested to them. For in the half-spandrel wall between the first arch and the bank they might have spied a small window looking down on the sullen, silent gloom, foam-flecked with past commotion, that crept languidly away from beneath. It belonged to a little vaulted chamber in the bridge, devised by some vanished lord as a kind of summer-house—long neglected, but having in it yet a mouldering table, a broken chair or two and a rough bench. A little path led steep from the end of the parapet down to its hidden door. It was now used only by the game-keepers for traps and fishing-gear and odds and ends of things, and was generally supposed to be locked up. The laird had, however, found it open, and his refuge in it had been connived at by one of the men, who, as they heard afterward, had given him the key and assisted him in carrying out a plan he had devised for barricading the door. It was from this place he had so suddenly risen at the call of Blue Peter, and to it he had as suddenly withdrawn again—to pass in silence and loneliness through his last purgatorial pain.[2 - Com' io fui dentro, in un bogliente vetroGittato mi sarei per rinfrescarmi,Tant' era ivi lo'ncendio senza metro.Del Purgatorio, xxvii. 49.]

Mrs. Stewart was sitting in her drawing-room alone: she seldom had visitors at Kirkbyres—not that she liked being alone, or indeed being there at all, for she would have lived on the Continent, but that her son's trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them, kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after scraping for a whole year that she could escape to Paris or Homburg, where she was at home. There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill fortune at faro.

What she meditated over her knitting by the firelight—she had put out her candles—it would be hard to say, perhaps unwholesome to think: there are souls to look into which is, to our dim eyes, like gazing down from the verge of one of the Swedenborgian pits.

But much of the evil done by human beings is as the evil of evil beasts: they know not what they do—an excuse which, except in regard to the past, no man can make for himself, seeing the very making of it must testify its falsehood.

She looked up, gave a cry and started to her feet: Stephen stood before her, halfway between her and the door. Revealed in a flicker of flame from the fire, he vanished in the following shade, and for a moment she stood in doubt of her seeing sense. But when the coal flashed again there was her son, regarding her out of great eyes that looked as if they had seen death. A ghastly air hung about him, as if he had just come back from Hades, but in his silent bearing there was a sanity, even dignity, which strangely impressed her. He came forward a pace or two, stopped, and said, "Dinna be frichtit, mem. I'm come. Sen' the lassie hame an' du wi' me as ye like. I canna haud aff o' me. But I think I'm deein', an' ye needna misguide me."

His voice, although it trembled a little, was clear and unimpeded, and, though weak in its modulation, manly.

Something in the woman's heart responded. Was it motherhood or the deeper godhead? Was it pity for the dignity housed in the crumbling clay, or repentance for the son of her womb? Or was it that sickness gave hope, and she could afford to be kind?

"I don't know what you mean, Stephen," she said, more gently than he had ever heard her speak.

Was it an agony of mind or of body, or was it but a flickering of the shadows upon his face? A moment, and he gave a half-choked shriek and fell on the floor. His mother turned from him with disgust and rang the bell. "Send Tom here," she said.

An elderly, hard-featured man came.

"Stephen is in one of his fits," she said.

The man looked about him: he could see no one in the room but his mistress.

"There he is," she continued, pointing to the floor. "Take him away. Get him up to the loft and lay him in the hay."

The man lifted his master like an unwieldy log and carried him, convulsed, from the room.

Stephen's mother sat down again by the fire and resumed her knitting.

CHAPTER LXV.

THE LAIRD'S VISION

Malcolm had just seen his master set out for his solitary ride when one of the maids informed him that a man from Kirkbyres wanted him. Hiding his reluctance, he went with her and found Tom, who was Mrs. Stewart's grieve and had been about the place all his days.

"Mr. Stephen's come hame, sir," he said, touching his bonnet, a civility for which Malcolm was not grateful.

"It's no possible," returned Malcolm. "I saw him last nicht."

"He cam aboot ten o'clock, sir, an' hed a turn o' the fa'in' sickness o' the spot. He's verra ill the noo, an' the mistress sent me ower to speir gien ye wad obleege her by gaein' to see him."

"Has he ta'en till's bed?" asked Malcolm.

"We pat him infill 't, sir. He's ravin' mad, an' I'm thinkin' he's no far frae his hin'er en'."

"I'll gang wi' ye direckly," said Malcolm.

In a few minutes they were riding fast along the road to Kirkbyres, neither with much to say to the other, for Malcolm distrusted every one about the place, and Tom was by nature taciturn.

"What garred them sen' for me, div ye ken?" asked Malcolm at length when they had gone about halfway.

"He cried oot upo' ye i' the nicht," answered Tom.

When they arrived Malcolm was shown into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Stewart met him with red eyes. "Will you come and see my poor boy?" she said.

"I wull du that, mem. Is he verra ill?"

"Very. I'm afraid he is in a bad way."

She led him to a dark, old-fashioned chamber, rich and gloomy. There, sunk in the down of a huge bed with carved ebony posts, lay the laird, far too ill to be incommoded by the luxury to which he was unaccustomed. His head kept tossing from side to side and his eyes seemed searching in vacancy.

"Has the doctor been to see 'im, mem?" asked Malcolm.

"Yes, but he says he can't do anything for him."

"Wha waits upon 'im, mem?"

"One of the maids and myself."

"I'll jist bide wi' 'im."

"That will be very kind of you."

"I s' bide wi' 'im till I see 'im oot o' this, ae w'y or ither,", added Malcolm, and sat down by the bedside of his poor distrustful friend. There Mrs. Stewart left him.

The laird was wandering in the thorny thickets and slimy marshes which, haunted by the thousand misshapen horrors of delirium, beset the gates of life. That one so near the light and slowly drifting into it should lie tossing in hopeless darkness! Is it that the delirium falls, a veil of love, to hide other and more real terrors?

His eyes would now and then meet those of Malcolm as they gazed tenderly upon him, but the living thing that looked out of the windows was darkened and saw him not. Occasionally a word would fall from him, or a murmur of half-articulation float up like the sound of a river of souls; but whether Malcolm heard, or only seemed to hear, something like this, he could not tell, for he could not be certain that he had not himself shaped the words by receiving the babble into the moulds of the laird's customary thought and speech: "I dinna ken whaur I cam frae—I kenna whaur I'm gaein' till.—Eh, gien He wad but come oot an' shaw Himsel'!—O Lord! tak the deevil aff o' my puir back.—O Father o' lichts! gar him tak the hump wi' him. I hae no fawvor for't, though it's been my constant compainion this mony a lang."

But in general he only moaned, and after the words thus heard or fashioned by Malcolm lay silent and nearly still for an hour.

All the waning afternoon Malcolm sat by his side, and neither mother, maid nor doctor came near them.

"Dark wa's an' no a breath!" he murmured or seemed to murmur again. "Nae gerse nor flooers nor bees! I hae na room for my hump, an' I canna lie upo' 't, for that wad kill me. Wull I ever ken whaur I cam frae? The wine's unco guid. Gie me a drap mair, gien ye please, Lady Horn.—I thought the grave was a better place. I hae lain safter afore I dee'd.—Phemy! Phemy! Rin, Phemy, rin! I s' bide wi' them this time. Ye rin, Phemy!"

As it grew dark the air turned very chill, and snow began to fall thick and fast. Malcolm laid a few sticks on the smouldering peat-fire, but they were damp and did not catch. All at once the laird gave a shriek, and crying out, "Mither! mither!" fell into a fit so violent that the heavy bed shook with his convulsions. Malcolm held his wrists and called aloud. No one came, and, bethinking himself that none could help, he waited in silence for what would soon follow.

The fit passed quickly, and he lay quiet. The sticks had meantime dried, and suddenly they caught fire and blazed up. The laird turned his face toward the flame; a smile came over it; his eyes opened wide, and with such an expression of seeing gazed beyond Malcolm that he turned his in the same direction.