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 before you make this
decision. I do not, by any means, defend Strathoran. I have taken it
upon me, indeed, both to warn and to entreat him to give up this
ruinous--I will not say criminal course, he is embarked on: and I have
received from him, in return, letters that would melt your heart. Why he
persists in what he acknowledges to be wrong, I cannot tell; and I do
not defend him. He has got into the vortex, I suppose, and cannot
extricate himself. But his father built up my fortunes, Mrs. Catherine,
and so long as anything can be done, I will not forsake his son. This
seasonable relief may save him: without this, his affairs are hopelessly
entangled, and Strathoran must cease to be the home of the Sutherlands."
Mrs. Catherine leaned her head upon her hand, and did not speak. At
length, looking up, she saw, through the opposite window, Anne Ross and
Lewis coming up the waterside, to the Tower.
"You will leave me a time, for further thought," she said, slowly. "Put
the papers out of yon keen gallant's sight, or go into another room. You
will hear tidings of your prodigal from Lewis, Mr. Ferguson; and
doubtless you know him well enough, Walter, being birds of a feather.
Euphan Morison, send lunch for the gentlemen into the dining-parlor, and
tell Miss Ross I am waiting for her, in the little room."
So speaking, Mrs. Catherine rose and left the library, her face shadowed
with deeper gravity than was its wont--her step slow and heavy, and
proceeded through many winding passages, to a locked door, in the
furthest angle of the western wing. She opened it with a key which hung
from her neck, and entered a small apartment furnished with the most
meagre simplicity. It contained but two chairs and a small table, and
from the deep diamond-paned window, you could only see the steep side of
a hill, rough with whins and crags, which sprang sheer upward from the
back of the Tower. Upon the wall hung a fine portrait--a noble,
thoughtful, manly face, resembling Mrs. Catherine's except in so far as
its flush of strong manhood was different from the aspect of her
declining years. It was her brother, whose untimely death had cast its
heavy shadow over her own womanly maturity; and the room was Mrs.
Catherine's especial retirement, whither she was wont to come in her
seasons of most solemn and secret prayerfulness, or at some crisis when
her deliberations were grave enough to require the entire attention of
her whole earnest mind. Upon the table lay a large Bible--other
furniture or adornments there were none. In elder days, when the
Douglases of the Tower professed the faith of Rome, it might have been
called the lady's oratory; in these plainer times it was only "the
little room;" yet was surrounded with the awe, which must always environ
the strugglings of a strong spirit, however faintly known to the weaker
multitude around. Mrs. Catherine paced up and down its narrow limits,
moved in her spirit, and expressing often her strong emotion aloud.
"Isabel Balfour," she murmured to herself, stopping as she passed, to
turn upon the picture a look of deep and sorrowful affection. "Ay,
Sholto, it is her bairn, her firstborn, the son of her right hand. If ye
were here, Sholto Douglas, where you should have been, but for God's
pleasure, what would you spare for Isabel's son, that should have been
yours also, and a Douglas? I envied you your bride and your bairns,
Strathoran, for _his_ sake that I left lying in foreign earth, and now
your home is left to you desolate--woe's me! woe's me!"
Mrs. Catherine turned away and paced the room again, with quick and
uneasy steps: "Unrighteous? I know it is unrighteous; but if he had been
Sholto's son, what would I not have done for him, short of sin? and he
_is_ Isabel's--"
A footstep approached, through the passage, as she spoke, and
controlling herself instantly, Mrs. Catherine opened the door to admit
Anne Ross.
"What is the matter?" exclaimed Anne, as she entered. "What has
happened, Mrs. Catherine, that you are here?"
"Nothing, but that I am in a sore strait, and am needing counsel," said
Mrs. Catherine, closing the door; "sit down upon that seat, child, that
I may speak to you."
Anne silently took the chair, and Mrs. Catherine seated herself at the
other side of the small table, with her dead brother's picture looking
down upon her from the wall.
"Anne," she said, gravely, "you have heard the history of Sholto
Douglas, and I need not begin and tell it here again. Look upon him
there, in the picture, and see what manner of man he was. And you have
heard of Isabel Balfour, the trysted bride of the dead, and how, when he
had been in his grave but two twelvemonths, she was wedded to
Strathoran. I blamed her not, Anne, though I myself was truer to the
memory of my one brother; but wherefore am I speaking thus? There are
two lads, Anne, to whom I may do service. One is, as I have heard, an
honorable and upright young man, born to better fortune than he has
inherited, and toiling manfully, as becomes the son of a good house;
besides that, there is a kindred of blood between us. And the other is a
rioter, wasting his substance, and dishonoring his name in a strange
country. I am in a strait between, the two, which will I help, and which
will I pass by?"
"Mrs. Catherine," said Anne, anxiously, "what can I say? I fear that I
can see whom you mean; but how can I advise?"
"The well-doing lad is James Aytoun, the brother of the bairn Alice,"
said Mrs. Catherine, "who is working an honorable and just work to win
back the inheritance of his fathers. The rioter is Isabel Balfour's one
son--that might have been your first-born, Sholto Douglas! and I am in a
sore struggle between my reason and my liking. The boy has gotten in to
my inmost heart, as if he had been truly Sholto's son, and I cannot see
him fall."
There was a long silence--for many motives deterred Anne from
attempting, what at any time she would have done with reluctance, to
offer counsel to the clear and mature judgment of Mrs. Catherine; and
she rightly judged that her ancient friend had all the strength of
secretly-formed resolution to combat the scruples which Anne could not
help sympathizing with, though in her also, so many kindly feelings
pleaded for Archibald Sutherland--a prodigal, indeed, but still the
frank and joyous comrade of her childish days, the "young Strathoran" of
her native district.
At last, Mrs. Catherine rose.
"It must be done," she exclaimed. "Bear me witness, Anne, that I do it
against my judgment. I take the siller to feed the false wants of the
waster, that should help the honorable man in his travail. I do it,
knowing it is ill, but I cannot see the lad a ruined man. Let us away. I
will blind myself with no more false reasonings; the thing is wrong, but
we must do it--come!"
Anne followed without speaking. Mrs. Catherine locked the door, and,
leaning on her heavily, led her up stairs. Alice Aytoun was in the
drawing-room; Mrs. Catherine sent Anne thither, and went herself to seek
for something in her own room. She had intended offering substantial
help to James Aytoun, and now, when the warmth of her feelings for
Archibald Sutherland baulked her benevolent intent, she turned with an
involuntary impulse to make some atonement to Alice.
It had been a very dull morning for Alice--Mrs. Catherine was unusually
grave at breakfast, and since breakfast Alice had been alone--then she
saw Lewis and Anne walking arm-in-arm up Oranside to the Tower, and for
a long half-hour had waited and wondered in tantalising loneliness,
vainly expecting that they would join her, or she be summoned to them.
But they did not come, and Alice, wearied and disappointed, was venting
some girlish impatience on the piano, and indulging in a sort of
fretful wish for home--quiet, affectionate home, where such slight
neglects and forgetfulness never could take place--but, while the
thought was being formed, Anne stood beside her.
"Oh! Miss Ross," exclaimed Alice, "I thought you were never coming," and
through the fair curls the slightest side-glance was thrown to the
closed door, which testified that Anne now came alone. "I saw you coming
up by the water, and I have waited so long."
"Mrs. Catherine had some business with me," said Anne: "and Lewis, I
think, is detained below with other visitors. And what do you think of
our Strathoran now, Miss Aytoun?"
"Oh! a great deal," said Alice; "only I have not seen Strathoran
itself--Mr. Sutherland's house--yet. I am to go to Falcon's Craig, Mrs.
Catherine says, after to-morrow. Miss Falconer was here
yesterday--riding."
"And you liked her, did you not?" said Anne, smiling.
Alice looked dubious.
"Yes, very well. But is she not more like a gentleman than a lady, Miss
Ross?"
"Tell her so yourself to-morrow," said Anne, "and she will think you pay
her a high compliment."
Alice shook her head.
"I should not mean it for that, Miss Ross; but Mrs. Catherine said you
would perhaps go with me to Falcon's Craig. Will you? I should be half
afraid if I went alone."
"Feared for Marjory Falconer!" said Mrs. Catherine, entering the room.
"If once she knew her own spirit, it is not an ill one; and I see not
wherefore she should scare folk. I know well _you_ are not feared, Anne.
See, bairns, here are some bonnie dyes to look at, while I am away. Ye
are to wear them the morn's night, Alison Aytoun, according to your
pleasure. They belong to yourself. And see you go not away, Anne, till I
come back again. I will send Lewis up to hold you in mirth. For myself,
I have things to make me up, other than mirthful."
Alice advanced timidly to the table as Mrs. Catherine left the room.
What might be within that mysterious enclosure of morocco? Anne
smilingly anticipated her. Rich ornaments of pearls, more beautiful than
any thing the simple, girlish eyes had ever looked upon before. Alice
did not know how to look, or what to say; only her heart made one great
leap of delight--all these were her own! How pleased and proud, not for
the gift alone, but for the kindness that gave it, would be the mother's
heart at home!
Mrs. Catherine descended slowly, and, resuming her seat in the library,
called the young lawyer and the factor to her presence, and dismissed
Lewis to the pleasanter company up stairs. Mr. Ferguson, one of those
acute, sagacious, well-informed men, who are to be met with so
frequently in the middle class of rural Scotland, came with looks of
anxious expectation, and Walter Foreman, of whom his independent client
did not deign to ask counsel, took his place again, with secret pique,
fancying himself at least as good an adviser as the plain and quiet
stepdaughter of Mrs. Ross, of Merkland.
"Mr. Ferguson," said Mrs. Catherine, "I have made up my mind. You shall
have the siller. Thank me not. I do that which I know is wrong, and
which I would have done for no mortal but Isabel Balfour's son. You can
get the papers made out at your convenience, and tell me the name of his
dwelling. I will write to the ill-doer myself."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Ferguson, eagerly, "I beg you will not give yourself
so much trouble, Mrs. Catherine. I will myself write to Strathoran
immediately, and tell him of your kindness."
"Doubtless," said Mrs. Catherine: "but wherefore should I not have my
word of exhortation, as well as another? Write me down Archie
Sutherland's address. I could get it from Lewis Ross, but I do not
choose that; and let the siller be paid to Mr. Ferguson, Walter
Foreman--that is, when the papers are ready--for mind that I do not
_give_ this siller, I only lend it."
"On the lands of Lochend and Loelyin," said Mr. Ferguson. "Of course,
Mrs. Catherine."
A slight smile of triumph hovered about the factor's mouth.--Mrs.
Catherine perceived it.
"On which I will have the annual rent paid to a day," she said, with
some sternness, "as if I were the coldest stranger that ever heard of
Archie Sutherland's needs or ill-doings, and, I trow, that is a wide
word. If I had not purposed so, I might have given him the siller, for
what is it to a woman of years like me? Truly, my own spirit bears me
witness, that I would give that threefold, if it were mine to give, with
a light heart, to restore the prodigal to the house of his fathers, as
innocent as he went away. Let the business be done, Walter Foreman;
doubtless, you will be taken up with the ploy to-morrow, and will be
putting it off till after that."
"We can get it done immediately," said Walter, somewhat sullenly.
"What ails you, sir?" said Mrs. Catherine. "Should I have taken counsel
with you on the secrets of my own spirit, think you?--I that am given to
take counsel of no man. Be content, Walter Foreman--you are not an ill
gallant, but have overmuch favor for your own wisdom, as is common at
your years. If you live to count threescore, you will be an humbler
man."
"Our success is a most fortunate thing for Strathoran," said Mr.
Ferguson, as they left the Tower. "But the letter--I would not receive
such a letter as Mrs. Catherine will write, on such a subject, for the
half of his estate."
Walter Foreman shrugged his shoulders.
"And yet she has the greatest regard for him. Mrs. Sutherland was
betrothed to Mrs. Catherine's brother, when he died, people say; and it
is her strange adoration of his memory that makes her so fond of young
Strathoran. A singular consequent, one would think."
"Mrs. Catherine is altogether singular," said Mr. Ferguson, "and not to
be judged as people of the world are."
And when the night was far spent, and Alice had carried her bounding
heart, and her new possessions, into her own bright apartment, and was
electrifying little Bessie there, with a glimpse of the wonderous beauty
of those pearls, and trying them on before the mirror on the walls, and
listening with bursts of gay laughter to Bessie's guesses of their
value--sums immense and fabulous to the simplicity of both, yet,
nevertheless, in truth, not greatly exceeding their true worth--Mrs.
Catherine sat in the library alone, writing her letter, her strong
features swept by deep emotion often, and her steady hand shaken. The
course which the young man was pursuing, was in every way the most
repulsive to her feelings. Sin it appeared in the eyes of her strong,
unswerving, pure religion--dishonor to her nice sense of uprightness and
independence. His foreign residence and likings shocked her warm,
home-affections, her entire nationality, and the possible alienation of
his lands from the name and family in whose possession they had been so
long, alarmed alike fear and prejudice; for Mrs. Catherine, boasting her
own pure descent from the "dark-grey man," was no enemy to the law of
entail. His sister, too, and her separation from the husband for whom
she had left her mother's sick-bed--all these things poured in upon Mrs.
Catherine's mind, increasing her agitation, and hallowed, as all her
fears were, by that strange visionary tenderness, so thoroughly in
unison with her strong character, despite its romance, which clung
around those who might have been the children of that dearest brother
Sholto, whose mortality, so much as remained of it, lay treasured in yon
lone burying-ground in far Madeira, upon whose sunny shore he died.
"Archibald Sutherland," wrote Mrs. Catherine, "I have been hearing
tidings of you, which have carried a sword into my inmost heart;
and though I might well write in anger, seeing that though I am not
of your kin, you were in my arms a helpless bairn, before you were
in the arms of any mortal--it is in grief rather that I speak to
you. Wherefore is there neither firelight nor candlelight in the
house of Strathoran? Is the home of your fathers not good enough
for a son that puts in jeopardy their good fame? Is the roof that
sheltered Isabel Balfour in her bridal days, too mean for Isabel
Sutherland? or wherefore is it, that with your fair lands and good
possessions you are dwelling in a strange and ungodly country?
Father and mother you have none to warn you. Answer to me, Archie
Sutherland, who have known you all your days, wherefore it should
be so. Think you that among the flattering fools that are about
you, there is one that would lose a night's sleep, if Strathoran
and all belonging to it, were swept into the sea? Come back to your
own dwelling-place: witless and prodigal as you have been, there is
not a hind in the parish but would lament over the desolate house
of your fathers. Think you that it is a small thing, the leal
liking and respect of a whole countryside, come down to you as a
heritage? or is it your will to give up that for the antics of a
papistical and alien race? I say to you, come back to your own
house, Archie Sutherland. There is neither healthfulness nor
safety--let alone good fame and godliness, a man's best plenishing
for this world and the next--in the course you are running now.
"Think not that I write this because I have served you with siller.
Over the son of Isabel Balfour, the sister of Sholto Douglas has a
right of succor and counsel, warning and reproof. Boy! if you had
been my own--if in God's good pleasure you had borne the name of my
own brother--the dearest name upon this earth to me--what is there
that you might not have claimed at my hands? What is there now,
that would be for your own good, that I would hesitate to do?--but
far be it from me, who mind your mother's travail for the new birth
in you, the which in all mortal seeming has not yet been granted to
her prayers--to prop up your goings in a way of ill-doing. Of what
good is it to the world, I ask you, Archie Sutherland, that you
have been made upon it, a living man with a mind within you, and a
heaven over you? Who is the better for the light that God has put
into your earthen vessel? A crowd of dancing, singing fools, that
know not either the right honor, or the grave errand of a man into
this world. Shame upon you, the son of a stalwart and good house,
to be wasting in bairnly diversion, the days you will never see
again, till you meet them before the Throne. Listen to me, Archie
Sutherland--return to your own house, and to such a manner of life
as becomes an honorable and upright man, and I give you my
word--the worth of which, you may be known--that for disentangling
you from the unhealthful meshes of borrowed siller, the means shall
not be to seek.
"Unto your sister Isabel, I have ever been a prophet of evil;
nevertheless, she bears the name, and, in a measure, the
countenance, of Sholto's Isabel and mine. If she will not return to
the lawful shelter and rule of her own house, let her come to
Strathoran, or, if it likes her, to the Tower. Do you think, or
does she think, that the very winged things that are about you,
their own sillie selves, honor the wife for disregarding her
natural right? The bond was of her own tieing; she liked him better
than father and mother once--does she like him less now than she
likes ill-fame, and slight esteem? If it is so, let her come home
to me, her mother's earliest and oldest friend. Bairns!--bairns!
there is more to provide for than the pleasure of the quick hours
that are speeding over ye. Purity before God, honor in the sight of
men: are your spirits blinded within ye, that you cannot perceive
the two?
CATHERINE DOUGLAS."