Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice. Oliphant Margaret

The minds of the stately old lady and the elfin girl came to conclusions strangely similar. There rose in them both an instinctive impulse of kindly protection, natural enough in Alice Aytoun’s aged kinswoman, but contrasting oddly with the age and position of Jacky Morison.

      Anne and Lewis visited the Tower next day. In the Sutherlands, of whom Lewis brought tidings so unfavorable, Mrs. Catherine was deeply interested, and listened while he spoke of them, with many shakings of her head, and doubts and fears.

      “Trysted to evil,” she exclaimed, as Lewis told her in his careless way, of Mrs. Duncombe’s Paris life. “Did I not say nothing good could come of the bairn that left the sick bed of her mother, for the sake of a strange man; ay, and made the sick-bed – a death-bed by the deed. Lewis, is’t the lad’s fault, think you, or is’t hers?”

      “Oh, I don’t know that there is much fault in it,” said Lewis. “It’s not a formal separation, you know; only Isabel’s living with her brother, because it is, beyond dispute, pleasanter to live in Paris than in Gibraltar. You don’t know really – you can have no idea.”

      “Think you so?” said Mrs. Catherine, quickly, “but maybe there are folk living who knew such places and things, before you were born! Why does Isabel Sutherland not return to the house of her fathers, if she cannot dwell with the man she left father and mother for?”

      “There is no accounting for these things,” said Lewis, with a slight sneer.

      “Lewis Ross,” said Mrs. Catherine, “hold your peace; you are but a boy, and should leave that to your elders. Anne, I am sore grieved for Archie Sutherland; if evil comes to the lad, it will be as hard to me, as if evil were coming upon you.”

      CHAPTER III

      DURING the following week there were great preparations and much bustle in Merkland, for Lewis’s birthday was to be celebrated with unwonted festivities, and all Mrs. Ross’s energies were aroused to make an appearance worthy the occasion. All the Lairds’ families round about had received invitations to the solemn dinner-party, at which Lewis Ross was, for the first time, to take his father’s place. There was to be a dinner, too, in the Sutherland Arms, at Portoran, of the not very extensive tenantry of Merkland, at which the landlord and his underlings laughed in their sleeves, contrasting it secretly with the larger festivities which had hailed the majority of the youthful Sutherland of Strathoran, whose continued absence from his own home, gave occasion for so many surmisings. But yet, on a small scale, as they were, these same Merkland festivities were a matter of some moment in the quiet country-side. Alice Aytoun’s gay heart leaped breathlessly at the thought of them, and many anxious cogitations had risen under her fair curls, touching that pretty gown of light silk, which was her only gala dress. Whether it was good enough to shine in that assemblage of rural aristocracy, and how it would look beside the beautiful robes which, Bessie reported, the Misses Coulter, of Harrows, had ordered from Edinburgh for the occasion. Alice had serious doubts – her only consolation under which was Bessie’s genuine admiration; and thought within herself, with a sigh, that if she had to go to many parties, the same dress would not do always, and her mother, at home, could not afford to order beautiful robes for her, as Mrs. Coulter could; however, that was still in the future, and but a dim prospective evil.

      Lewis Ross, in those busy days, had many errands to the Tower, and on his fine horse, looked, as Alice thought, the very impersonation of youthful strength, and courage, and gay spirits. And Merkland was a pretty house, with its deep bordering of woods, and its quiet home-landscape, of cultivated fields and scattered farm-houses. Alice almost thought she preferred its tamer beauty, to the wide expanse of hills and valleys, of wandering river, and broad sea, upon which she looked out, from the deepest window of her chamber in the eastern tower.

      All the parish was stirred to welcome Lewis, and other parishes surrounding Strathoran, added the pressure of their kindliness. He was in the greatest request everywhere. From gay Falcon’s Craig to the sober Manse, from drowsy Smoothlie to the bustling homestead of Mr. Coulter, of Harrows, everybody delighted to honor the youthful heir of Merkland. Lewis did all that goodwill and good horsemanship could do, to renew his acquaintance with them all. He gallopped to Falcon’s Craig, and spent a gay night with the bold Falconers. He met Ralph by appointment next day, to follow the hounds. He made a visit to Smoothlie, and curbed his horse into compulsory conformity to the sober paces of Mr. Ambler’s respectable pony, as that easy, quiet old gentleman, who was conjoined with Mrs. Ross in the guardianship of her son, accompanied him to Merkland. And Lewis inspected the stock at Harrows, and dropped in at the Manse, to chat awhile with Mrs. Bairn’s father; yet, with all these labors on his hand, did yet insist, in the excess of his brotherly solicitude, on accompanying his reluctant sister Anne to the Tower, the day before he became of age.

      Mrs. Catherine sat in her library, that day, in grave deliberation – with young Walter Foreman, and Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, again beside her. The table was strewed with papers, and the two gentlemen were pressing something to which she objected, upon the firm old lady.

      “The siller is mine,” she said, “be it so. The man (I will say no ill of him, seeing he was a kinsman of my own, but that he was a fool, which is in no manner uncommon) is dead, and his will can have no more changes; frail folk as we are, that can never be counted on for our steadfastness, till we are in our graves! But allowing that the siller is my own – is it a lawful purpose, I ask of you, Mr. Ferguson, to build up with it, the foolish pleasures of a prodigal – alack, that I should call his mother’s son so! while I may have other righteous errands to send it forth upon?”

      “It is to build up the old house of Strathoran. It is to save your friend’s son,” said the factor, with an appealing motion of his hand.

      Mrs. Catherine was moved, and did not answer for a moment.

      “The lad was left well in this world’s goods,” she said, at last. “A fairer course was never before mortal man. An honorable name, a good inheritance, the house of his fathers over his head, and a country-side looking up to him. What could he seek more, I ask you, Mr. Ferguson? And where is the lad? Revelling in yon land of playactors, and flunkies, and knicknackets: consorting with a herd of buzzing things, that were worms yesterday, and will be nothing in the morn. Speak not to me; I have seen suchlike with my own eyes. He must have his feasts, and his flatterers, forsooth! and the good land, that God gave him, eaten up for it. Bonnie-dyes, and paintings, and statues said he? And if it were even so (and the youth, Lewis Ross, says otherwise,) should he take the poor man’s lamb for that, think ye? – the farmer’s honest gains, that he toils for, with the care of his mind, and the sweat of his brow?”

      The lawyer and the factor exchanged glances.

      “I beg you to do us justice, Mrs. Catherine,” said Mr. Ferguson, deprecatingly: “that was done in no case but in Mr. Ewing’s; and the land is really worth considerably more now than when he got his former lease.”

      “And whose praise is that?” said Mrs. Catherine, sharply. “Not the laird’s, who never put a finger to the land. Do you not know well yourself, Robert Ferguson, that Andrew Ewing’s lease had but four years to run, when by the good hand of Providence, giving him a discreet wife, with siller, he was set on improving the land? Has he not spent his profits twice told upon it? And, before he has time to reap a just harvest, the prodigal must come in, to take a tithe off the gains of the honest man. I take ye to witness, that the welfare of the lad, Archie Sutherland, Isabel Balfour’s son, lies near my own heart, but I cannot shut my eyes to this evil.”

      “It was done in no other case,” repeated Mr. Ferguson.

      “Was there any other lease out,” retorted Mrs. Catherine, “that the hunger of siller could have its aliment on? You are a discreet man, Mr. Ferguson, and you, Walter Foreman, with your business-breeding, should have some notion of the value of siller. Is it not a deep sea that ye are asking me to throw this portion into? A hungry mouth that, the more ye fill it, will but gape and gaunt the more? So far as the siller is mine, have I not gotten it to use it well, as my light goes? – to succour the widow and fatherless, maybe – not to pamper the unnatural wants of a waster and a prodigal?”

      “Mrs. Catherine,” said the factor, “hear me speak