Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice. Oliphant Margaret

Alice’s entree into the festivities and party-givings of that quiet district, which her inexperience called “the world,” had been a triumph – and with so much homage laid at her little feet, and so much girlish delight and laughing wonder, in receiving that strange, new tribute of admiration, it was scarcely wonderful that the Edinburgh parlor, with its quiet dwelling at home, and brief domestic circle, seemed almost sombre in the contrast. It was arranged, however, that Alice should return home after the new year, and, her conscience eased of some compunctions it had, respecting neglect of her mother, Alice looked forward to the especial merry-makings of that blythe season with a light heart.

      Meanwhile, Anne Ross’s ingenuity was vainly exercised in devising expedients to occupy her brother, and divert him from those frequent visits which it had become his pleasure to pay at the Tower. Lewis found numberless errands – alleged consultations with Mrs. Catherine, at which his mother fumed silently in sullen dignity – pretences for advising with the shrewd factotum of Mrs. Catherine’s finely-cultivated home-farm, concerning those fields immediately adjoining Merkland which Mr. Coulter advised, putting on some scientific regimen – or even a rare fungus, or delicate moss to show to Miss Aytoun, who began to be interested in that beautiful science of botany which Lewis himself had taken up so suddenly.

      These visits, and the too certain end to which they tended, pained Anne deeply, overpowered her, indeed, sometimes with sick bewilderment, the more that in the present state of matters, she was perfectly powerless. Any step of her’s might precipitate Lewis, so jealously alive to interference as he was, and make that certain, which was now only feared and deprecated, so Anne, like her friend in the Tower, had to wait perforce for the regular course of events, and with an anxiety still more intense and painful than Mrs. Catherine’s. What but woe and mishap could come from this unhappy intercourse? What but pain and disappointment and sorrow to these two youthful hearts.

      Anne could perceive that it annoyed her step-mother; that Mrs. Ross, with her overweening partiality for, and pride in her only son, was inclined to take his attention to Alice Aytoun as a personal slight and injury to herself. But it was not because a connection so terrible existed between the families already – Alice had no friends to elevate the standing, nor portion to increase the wealth of her future partner, and therefore Mrs. Ross frowned upon the growing devotion of Lewis, and already, in many a peevish altercation and sarcastic allusion, had brought in Alice Aytoun’s name – fanning thereby the flame which she hoped to extinguish.

      And during these months, the little girl, so strangely brought to Oran Mill, was learning the tongue of her new home rapidly. A strange junction, the liquid Spanish, which fell on Jacky’s visionary ear so pleasantly, “like the words folk hear in dreams,” made, mingled with these soft syllables of the homely, Scottish tongue, broken from what harshness soever might originally be in them, by the child’s voice of lisping music. Mrs. Melder had been told to call her Lilias, and affection had already contracted the name into the familiar diminutive of “Lilie.” A strange exotic lily the child seemed with her small, pale features and olive-tinted cheek, and flood of dusky silken hair, and she had become already a wonder in the parish.

      Mrs. Coulter sent for the miller’s wife on some small pretext of business, that she might see her little lodger, and Lilie returned from Harrows laden with fruit, and toys, and sweetmeats, and leaving little Harry Coulter, the agriculturist’s Benjamin, struggling with desperate energy to follow her, and hopelessly in love. Lilie had even been taken to the Tower, and half smothered with caresses from Alice, had received from Mrs. Catherine strange looks of musing melancholy, and one abrupt expression of wonder —

      “Who was she like?”

      Miss Falconer herself had gallopped a couple of miles out of her way, and stopped at the Mill, with her horse in a foam, to make acquaintance with the little Donna. Jacky had constituted herself her bodyguard and attendant, and carried her off whole days on solitary rambles among the hills. There were few of all the circle round who were not interested in the stranger child.

      But no one received so great a share of Lilie’s regard, or was so powerfully attracted towards her, as Anne Ross. There was a new pleasure now in the long walks, which had a half hour’s playful intercourse with Lilie to make them cheerful; and Anne again and again repeated her inquiries concerning the stranger who had left the child with Mrs. Melder, without however eliciting anything new.

      “She wasna put on like a lady,” repeated the miller’s wife. “My ain muckle shawl, wi’ the border, was worth twa o’ the ain she had on, and naething but a printed goun. But I have seen folk in silks and satins, Miss Anne, that had a commoner look – no that she was bonnie – but you saw her yoursel.”

      “Yes,” said Anne; “she was a very remarkable looking person.”

      “Na’ but the eyes of her! They made me that I near sat down and fainted – they had sic a wistful, murning look in them. The bairn’s are no unlike. Haud up your head, Lilie, my lamb – only it wad tak watching and sorrow, if I’m no far mistaken, to gie her yon look. Waes me, Miss Anne! it spoke o’ a sair heart!”

      “But Lilie’s are bright and happy,” said Anne, drawing the child closer to her, and looking affectionately upon the little face, from which shone eyes deep enough in their liquid darkness to mirror forth great sorrows. “We must not let grief come near Lilie.”

      “Lilie blythe – blythe?” said the child, clinging to her side. “Lilie no like happy. Blythe is bonnier! Lilie go the morn – up – up!”

      “To the hills, Lilie?”

      “Up – up!” said the child, imitating with feet and hands the motions of climbing. “Lilie look away far – at the water.”

      “At the Oran, Lilie?”

      “Where he go to?” asked Lilie, pointing through the window to the brown, foaming water – ”rinning fast? Where he go to?”

      “To the sea, Lilie,” said Anne.

      “Yes – yes,” said the child. “Lilie once sail upon the sea; row – row – in a big boat. Lilie likes to look at it.”

      “Were you alone, Lilie?” said Anne. “Was no one with you?”

      The child did not understand.

      “A big boat – big – big – bigger than yon!” Lilie had seen Mrs. Catherine’s little vessel on the Oran, and had been greatly interested in it. “Lilie ran about,” and the child eked out her slender vocabulary with the universal language of signs, “and saw the sea; but the water did not come upon Lilie.”

      “And was there no one to take care of Lilie?” said Anne. – ”No one to put on her little frock, and to comb these pretty curls?”

      The child looked up thoughtfully for a moment, and then, hiding her face in Anne’s lap, burst out into a passion of tears, moaning out in her own language a lamentation over her “good nurse, her Juana,” with all the inconsolable vehemence of childhood.

      “She has done that before,” said Mrs. Melder. “Can ye make onything o’ the words, Miss Anne? I hae gotten to ken the sound o’ them, though neither Robert nor me can make ony sense o’ the outlandish tongue. Lilie, my lamb, whisht, like a guid bairn, and dry your eyes. See what a bonnie book Miss Anne has brocht ye, and pictures in’t!

      “There’s mony o’ the neighbors wonder at us,” continued Mrs. Melder, as the child, when its fit of weeping was over, clambered up upon the table in the window, and sat there, in enjoyment of the picture-book, “for taking a bairn we ken naething about; and ye may think it foolish too, Miss Anne. But the house was waesome wi’ Robert out a’ day, and the bit thing had a pitiful look wi’t, and the leddy – for she bid to be a leddy, though she was plain enough put on – pleaded wi’ me in sic a way that I couldna withstand it; and we’re clar o’ a’ loss, wi’ the siller being in Mr. Foreman’s hand; and the bairn – puir wee desolate thing, cast off by its ain bluid – is a fine bairn, now that she’s learning to speak in a civilized tongue. My ain Bell, if the Almighty had spared her, would hae been about Lilie’s age. Eh, Miss Anne! a young lady like you canna ken what a sore dispensation that was! But we maun hae our ain way.”

      “And