Those slow days of household gloom and darkness, when death lies in the
house, and every thought and every sound still bears an involuntary
reference to the solemn inmate, resting unconscious of them all, went
slowly over the roof of Norlaw. Sunday came, doubly mournful; a day in
which Scottish decorum demanded that no one should stir abroad, even to
church, and which hung indescribably heavy in those curtained rooms, and
through the unbroken stillness of its leisure, upon the three youths who
had not even their mother’s melancholy society to help them through the
day. The Mistress was in her own room, closely shut up with her Bible
and her sorrow, taking that first Sabbath of her widowhood, a solitary
day of privilege and indulgence, for her own grief. Not a sound was
audible in the house; Jenny, who could be best spared, and who was
somewhat afraid of the solemn quietness of Norlaw, had been sent away
early this morning, to spend the Sabbath with her mother, in Kirkbride,
and Marget sat alone in the kitchen, with a closed door and partially
shuttered window, reading to herself half aloud from the big Bible in
her lap. In the perfect stillness it was possible to hear the monotonous
hum of her half-whispering voice, and sometimes the dull fall of the
ashes on the kitchen hearth, but not a sound besides.
The blinds were all down in the dining-room, and the lower half of the
shutters closed. Though the July sun made triumphant daylight even in
spite of this, it was such a stifling, closed-in, melancholy light,
bright upon the upper walls and the roof, but darkened and close around
the lads, that the memory of it never quite passed out of their hearts.
This room, too, was paneled and painted of that dull drab color, which
middle-class dining-rooms even now delight in; there were no pictures on
the walls, for the family of Norlaw were careless of ornaments, like
most families of their country and rank. A dull small clock upon the
black marble mantel-piece, and a great china jar on the well-polished,
old-fashioned sideboard, were the only articles in which any thing
beyond use was even aimed at. The chairs were of heavy mahogany and
hair-cloth--a portion of the long dining-table, with a large leaf folded
down, very near as black as ebony, and polished like a mirror, stood
between the front windows--and the two round ends of this same
dining-table stood in the centre of the room, large enough for family
purposes, and covered with a red and blue table-cover. There was a heavy
large chintz easy-chair at the fire-place, and a little table supporting
a covered work-basket in the corner window--yet the room had not been
used to look a dull room, heavy and dismal though it was to-day.
The youngest boy sat by the table, leaning over a large family Bible,
full of quaint old pictures. Cosmo saw the pictures without seeing
them--he was leaning both his elbows on the table, supporting his head
with a pair of long, fair hands, which his boy’s jacket, which he had
outgrown, left bare to the wrists. His first agony of grief had fallen
into a dull aching; his eyes were observant of the faintest lines of
those familiar wood-cuts, yet he could not have told what was the
subject of one of them, though he knew them all by heart. He was
fair-haired, pale, and delicate, with sensitive features, and dark eyes,
like his father’s, which had a strange effect in contrast with the
extreme lightness of his hair and complexion. He was the tender boy--the
mother’s child of the household, and it was Cosmo of whom the village
gossips spoke, when they took comfort in the thought that only his
youngest son was like Norlaw.
Next to Cosmo, sitting idly on a chair, watching how a stream of
confined sunshine came in overhead, at the side of the blind, was
Huntley, the eldest son. He was very dark, very ruddy, with close curls
of black hair, and eyes of happy hazel-brown. Heretofore, Huntley
Livingstone’s principal characteristic had been a total incapacity to
keep still. For many a year Marget had lamented over him, that he would
not “behave himself,” and even the Mistress had spoken her mind only too
often on the same subject. Huntley would not join, with gravity and
decorum, even the circle of evening visitors who gathered on unfrequent
occasions round the fireside of Norlaw. He had perpetually something on
hand to keep him in motion, and if nothing better was to be had, would
rummage through lumber-room and family treasury, hunting up dusty old
sets of newspapers and magazines, risking the safety of precious old
hereditary parchments, finding a hundred forgotten trifles, which he had
nothing to do with. So that it was rare, even on winter evenings, to
find Huntley at rest in the family circle; it was his wont to appear in
it at intervals bringing something with him which had no right to be
there--to be ordered off peremptorily by his mother with the intruding
article; to be heard, all the evening through, knocking in nails, and
putting up shelves for Marget, or making some one of the countless
alterations, which had always to be made in his own bed-chamber and
private sanctuary; and finally, to reappear for the family worship,
during which he kept as still as his nature would permit, and the family
supper, at which Huntley’s feats, in cutting down great loaves of bread,
and demolishing oat-cakes, were a standing joke in the household. This
was the old Huntley, when all was well in Norlaw. Now he sat still,
watching that narrow blade of sunshine, burning in compressed and close
by the side of the blind; it was like his own nature, in those early
days of household grief.
Patrick was a less remarkable boy than either of his brothers; he was
most like Huntley, and had the same eyes, and the same crisp, short
curls of black hair. But Patrick had a medium in him; he did what was
needful, with the quickest practical sense; he was strong in his
perception of right and justice; so strong, that the Quixotry of boyish
enthusiasm had never moved him; he was not, in short, a describable
person; at this present moment, he was steadily occupied with a volume
of sermons; they were extremely heavy metal, but Patrick went on with
them, holding fast his mind by that anchor of heaviness. It was not that
his gravity was remarkable, or his spiritual appreciation great; but
something was needful to keep the spirit afloat in that atmosphere of
death; the boys had been “too well brought up” to think of profaning the
Sabbath with light literature; and amusing themselves while their father
lay dead was a sin quite as heinous. So Patrick Livingstone read, with a
knitted brow, sermons of the old Johnsonian period, and Cosmo pondered
the quaint Bible woodcuts, and Huntley watched the sunshine; and they
had not spoken a word to each other for at least an hour.
Huntley was the first to break the silence.
“I wish to-morrow were come and gone,” he exclaimed, suddenly, rising up
and taking a rapid turn through the room; “a week of this would kill
me.”
Cosmo looked up, with an almost feminine reproof in his tearful black
eyes.
“Well, laddie,” said the elder brother; “dinna look at me with these
e’en! If it would have lengthened out his days an hour, or saved him a
pang, would I have spared years to do it? but what is _he_ heeding for
all this gloom and silence now?”
“Nothing,” said the second brother, “but the neighbors care, and so does
my mother; it’s nothing, but it’s all we can give--and he _would_ have
heeded and been pleased, had he thought beforehand on what we should be
doing now.”
It was so true, that Huntley sat down again overpowered. Yes, _he_ would
have been pleased to think of every particular of the “respect” which
belonged to the dead. The closed houses, the darkened rooms, the funeral
train; that tender human spirit would have clung to every one of them in
his thoughts, keeping the warmth of human sympathy close to him to the
latest possibility, little, little though he knew about them now.
“What troubles me is standing still,” said Huntley, with a sigh. “I can
not tell what’s before us; I don’t think even my mother knows; I
believe it’s worse than we can think of; and we’ve neither friends, nor
money, nor influence. Here are we three Livingstones, and I’m not
twenty, and we’ve debts in money to meet, and mortgages on the land, and
nothing in the world but our hands and our heads, and what strength and
wit God has given us. I’m not grumbling--but to think upon it all, and
to think now that--that he’s gone, and we’re alone and for
ourselves--and to sit still neither doing nor planning, it’s that that
troubles me!”
“Huntley, it’s Sabbath day!” said Cosmo.
“Ay, I ken! it’s Sabbath and rest, but not to us,” cried the young man;
“here’s me, that should have seen my way--I’m old enough--me that should
have known where I was going, and how I was going, and been able to
spare a hand for you; and I’m the biggest burden of all; a man without a
trade to turn his hand to, a man without knowledge in his head or skill
in his fingers--and to sit still and never say a word, and see them
creeping down, day by day, and every thing put back as if life could be
put back and wait. True, Patie! what would you have me do?”
“Make up your mind, and wait till it’s time to tell it,” said Patie,
without either reproof or sympathy; but Cosmo was more moved--he came to
his eldest brother with a soft step.
“Huntley,” said Cosmo, in the soft speech of their childhood, “what
makes ye speak about a trade, you that are Livingstone of Norlaw? It’s
for us to gang and seek our fortunes; you’re the chief of your name, and
the lands are yours--they canna ruin _you_, Huntley. I see the
difference mysel’, the folks see it in the country-side; and as for
Patie and me, we’ll seek our fortunes--we’re only the youngest sons,
it’s our inheritance; but Norlaw, and home, and the name, are with you.”
This appeal had the strangest effect upon Huntley; it seemed to
dissipate in an instant all the impatience and excitement of the youth’s
grief; he put his arm round Cosmo, with a sudden melting of heart and
countenance.
“Do ye hear him, Patie?” cried Huntley, with tears; “he thinks home’s
home forever, because the race has been here a thousand years; he thinks
I’m a prince delivering my kingdom! Cosmo, the land’s gone; I know
there’s not an acre ours after to-morrow. I’ve found it out, bit by
bit, though nobody said a word; but we’ll save the house, and the old
castle, if we should never have a penny over, for mother and you.”
The boy stared aghast into his brother’s face. The land! it had been
Cosmo’s dream by night, and thought by day. The poetic child had made,
indeed, a heroic kingdom and inheritance out of that little patrimonial
farm. Notwithstanding, he turned to Patie for confirmation, but found no
comfort there.
“As you think best, Huntley,” said the second son, “but what is a name?
My mother will care little for Norlaw when we are gone, and the name of
a landed family has kept us poor. _I’ve_ found things out as well as
you. I thought it would be best to part with all.”
“It was almost his last word,” said Huntley, sadly.
“Ay, but he could not tell,” said the stout-hearted boy; “he was of
another mind from you or me; he did not think that our strength and our
lives were for better use than to be wasted on a word. What’s Norlaw
Castle to us, more than a castle in a book? Ay, Cosmo, it’s true. Would
you drag a burden of debt at Huntley’s feet for the sake of an acre of
corn-land, or four old walls? We’ve been kept down and kept in prison,
us and our forbears, because of Norlaw. I say we should go free.”
“And I,” cried Cosmo, lifting his long, white hand in sudden passion,
“I, if Huntley does not care for the name, nor for my father’s last
wish, nor for the house of our ancestors; I will never rest night nor
day, though I break my heart or lose my life, till I redeem Norlaw!”
Huntley, whose arm still rested on the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer,
with a look which had caught a tender, sympathetic, half-compassionate
enthusiasm from his.
“We’ll save Norlaw for my father’s son,” said the elder brother; and,
young as Huntley was, he looked with eyes full of love and pity upon
this boy, who inherited more from his father than his name. Huntley had
been brought up in all the natural love and reverence of a well-ordered
family; he knew there was weakness in his father’s character, beautiful,
lovable, tender weakness, for which, somehow, people only seem to like
him better. He had not permitted himself to see yet what harm and
selfish unconsciousness of others that graceful temperament had hidden.
He looked at Cosmo, thinking as a strong mind thinks of that
constitution which is called poetic--of the sensitive nature which would
shrink from unkindness, and the tender spirit which could not bear the
trials of the world; and the lad’s heart expanded over his father’s son.
Patie got up from his chair, and went to the little bookcase in the
corner to look for another book of sermons. This boy could not blind his
eyes, even with family affection. He loved his father, but he knew
plainly, and in so many words, that his father had ruined their
inheritance. He could not help seeing that this amiable tenderness bore
no better fruit than selfishness or cruelty. He thought it would be
right and just to all their hopes to part with even the name of Norlaw.
But it was not his concern; he was ready to give his opinion at the
proper time, but not to stand out unreasonably against the decision of
his elder brother; and when he, too, looked at Cosmo, it was with
soberer eyes than those of Huntley--not that he cared less for his
father’s son--but Patrick could not help seeing with those clear eyes of
his; and what he feared to see was not the sensitive nature and the
tender spirit, but the self-regard which lay beneath.
Which of them was right, or whether either of them were right, this
history will best show.