The house of Norlaw stands upon the slope of a low hill, under shelter
of the three mystic Eildons, and not very far from that little ancient
town which, in the language of the author of “Waverley,” is called
Kennaquhair.
A low, peaceable, fertile slope, bearing trees to its top-most height,
and corn on its shoulders, with a little river running by its base,
which manages, after many circuits, to wind its way into Tweed. The
house, which is built low upon the hill, is two stories in front, but,
owing to the unequal level, only one behind. The garden is all at the
back, where the ground is sheltered, but in front, the green, natural
surface of the hill descends softly to the water without any thing to
break its verdure. There are clumps of trees on each side, straying as
nature planted them, but nothing adorns the sloping lawn, which is not
called a lawn, nor used for any purposes of ornament by the household of
Norlaw.
Close by, at the right hand of this homely house, stands an
extraordinary foil to its serenity and peacefulness. The old castle of
Norlaw, gaunt and bare, and windowless, not a towered and battlemented
pile, but a straight, square, savage mass of masonry, with windows
pierced high up in its walls in even rows, like a prison, and the gray
stone-work below, as high under the first range of windows as the roof
of the modern house, rising up blank, like a rock, without the slightest
break or opening. To see this strange old ruin, in the very heart of the
peaceful country, without a feature of nature to correspond with its
sullen strength, nor a circumstance to suggest the times and the danger
which made that necessary, is the strangest thing in the world; all the
more that the ground has no special capacities for defense, and that the
castle is not a picturesque baronial accumulation of turrets and
battlements, but a big, austere, fortified dwelling-house, which modern
engineering could make an end of in half a day.
It showed, however, if it did nothing better, that the Livingstones were
knights and gentlemen, in the day when the Border was an unquiet
habitation--and for this, if for nothing else, was held in no little
honor by the yeoman Livingstone, direct descendant of the Sir Rodericks
and Sir Anthonys, who farmed the remains of his paternal property, and
dwelt in the modern house of Norlaw.
This house was little more than a farm-house in appearance, and nothing
more in reality. The door opened into a square hall, on either side of
which was a large room, with three deep-set windows in each; four of
these windows looked out upon the lawn and the water, while one broke
each corner of the outer wall. On the side nearest the castle, a little
behind the front level of the house, was an “outshot,” a little wing
built to the side, which formed the kitchen, upon the ever-open door of
which the corner window of the common family sitting room kept up a
vigilant inspection. A plentiful number of bed-chambers up-stairs were
reached by a good stair-case, and a gallery which encircled the hall;
the architecture was of the most monotonous and simple regularity; so
many windows on one side soberly poising so many windows on the other.
The stair-case made a rounded projection at the back of the house, which
was surmounted by a steep little turret roof, blue-slated, and bearing a
tiny vane for its crown, after the fashion of the countryside; and this,
which glimmered pleasantly among the garden fruit trees when you looked
down from the top of the hill--and the one-storied projection, which was
the kitchen, were the only two features which broke the perfect
plainness and uniformity of the house.
But though it was July when this history begins, the flush of
summer--and though the sunshine was sweet upon the trees and the water,
and the bare old walls of the castle, there was little animation in
Norlaw. The blinds were drawn up in the east room, the best
apartment--though the sun streamed in at the end window, and “the
Mistress” was not wont to leave her favorite carpet to the tender
mercies of that bright intruder; and the blinds were down in the
dining-room, which nobody had entered this morning, and where even the
Mistress’s chair and little table in the corner window could not keep a
vicarious watch upon the kitchen door. It was not needful; the two maids
were very quiet, and not disposed to amuse themselves. Marget, the elder
one, who was the byrewoman, and had responsibilities, went about the
kitchen very solemnly, speaking with a gravity which became the
occasion; and Janet, who was the house-servant, and soft-hearted, stood
at the table, washing cups and saucers, very slowly, and with the most
elaborate care, lest one of them should tingle upon the other, and
putting up her apron very often to wipe the tears from her eyes.
Outside, on the broad stone before the kitchen door, a little ragged boy
sat, crying bitterly--and no one else was to be seen about the house.
“Jenny,” said the elder maid, at last, “give that bairn a piece, and
send him away. There’s enow of us to greet--for what we’re a’ to do for
a puir distressed family, when aince the will o’ God’s accomplished this
day, I canna tell.”
“Oh, woman, dinna speak! he’ll maybe win through,” cried Jenny, with
renewed tears.
Marget was calm in her superior knowledge.
“I ken a death-bed from a sick-bed,” she said, with solemnity; “I’ve
seen them baith--and weel I kent, a week come the morn, that it was
little good looking for the doctor, or wearying aye for his physic time,
or thinking the next draught or the next pill would do. Eh sirs! ane
canna see when it’s ane’s ain trouble; if it had been ony ither man, the
Mistress would have kent as weel as me.”
“It’s an awfu’ guid judge that’s never wrang,” said Jenny, with a little
impatience. “He’s a guid faither, and a guid maister; it’s my hope he’ll
cheat you a’ yet, baith the doctor and you.”
Marget shook her head, and went solemnly to a great wooden press, which
almost filled one side of the kitchen, to get the “piece” which Jenny
showed no intention of bestowing upon the child at the door. Pondering
for a moment over the basket of oat cakes, Marget changed her mind, and
selected a fine, thin, flour one, from a little pile.
“It’s next to funeral bread,” she said to herself, in vindication of her
choice; “Tammie, my man, the maister would be nae better if ye could
mak’ the water grit with tears--run away hame, like a good bairn; tell
your mother neither the Mistress nor me will forget her, and ye can say,
I’ll let her ken; and there’s a piece to help ye hame.”
“I dinna want ony pieces--I want to ken if he’s better,” said the boy;
“my mother said I wasna to come back till there was good news.”
“Whisht, sirrah, he’ll hear you on his death-bed,” said Marget, “but
it’ll no do _you_ ony harm, bairn; the Mistress will aye mind your
mother; take your piece and run away.”
The child’s only answer was to bury his face in his hands, and break
into a new fit of crying. Marget came in again, discomfited; after a
while she took out a little wooden cup of milk to him, and set it down
upon the stone without a word. She was not sufficiently hard-hearted to
frown upon the child’s grief.
“Eh, woman Jenny!” she cried, after an interval, “to think a man could
have so little pith, and yet get in like this to folk’s hearts!”
“As if ye didna ken the haill tale,” cried Jenny, with indignant tears,
“how the maister found the wean afield with his broken leg, and carried
him hame--and how there’s ever been plenty, baith milk and meal, for
thae puir orphants, and Tammie’s schooling, and aye a kind word to mend
a’--and yet, forsooth, the bairn maunna greet when the maister’s at his
latter end!”
“We’ll a’ have cause,” said Marget, abruptly; “three bonnie lads that
might be knights and earls, every one, and no’ a thing but debt and
dool, nor a trade to set their hand to. Haud yer peace!--do ye think
there’s no trade but bakers and tailors, and the like o’ that? and
there’s Huntley, and Patie, and Cosmo, my bonnie bairns!--there never
was three Livingstones like them, nor three of ony other name as far as
Tyne runs--and the very bairn at the door has muckle to look to as
they!”
“But it’s nae concern o’ yours, or o’ mine. I’m sure the maister was aye
very good to me,” said Jenny, retiring into tears, and a _non sequitur_.
“No, that’s true--it’s nae concern o’ yours--_you’re_ no’ an auld
servant like me,” said her companion, promptly, “but for mysel’ I’ve
sung to them a’ in their cradles; I would work for them with my hands,
and thankful; but I wouldna desire that of them to let the like o’ me
work, or the Mistress toil, to keep them in idleset. Na, woman--I’m
jealous for my bairns--I would break my heart if Huntley was content to
be just like his father; if either the Mistress or the lads will listen
to me, I’ll gie my word to send them a’ away.”
“Send them away--and their mother in mourning? Oh, my patience! what
for?”
“To make their fortune,” said Marget, and she hung the great pot on the
great iron hook above the fire, with a sort of heroic gesture, which
might have been amusing under other circumstances--for Marget believed
in making fortunes, and had the impulse of magnificent hope at her
heart.
“Eh, woman! you’re hard-hearted,” said her softer companion, “to blame
the Maister at his last, and plan to leave the Mistress her lane in the
world! I would make them abide with her to comfort her, if it was me.”
Marget made no answer--she had comforted herself with the flush of fancy
which pictured these three sons of the house, each completing his
triumph--and she was the byrewoman and had to consider the cattle, and
cherish as much as remained of pastoral wealth in this impoverished
house. She went out with her dark printed gown carefully “kilted” over
her red and blue striped petticoat, and a pail in her hand. She was a
woman of forty, a farm servant used to out-of-door work and homely ways,
and had neither youth nor sentiment to soften her manners or enlarge her
mind. Yet her heart smote her when she thought of the father of the
house, who lay dying while she made her criticism upon him, true though
it was.
“Has he no’ been a good master to me? and would I spare tears if they
could ease him?” she said to herself, as she rubbed them away from her
eyes. “But folk can greet in the dark when there’s no work to do,” she
added, peremptorily, and so went to her dairy and her thoughts.
Tender-hearted Jenny cried in the kitchen, doing no good to any one; but
up-stairs in the room of death, where the family waited, there were
still no tears.