Amang the fremd I had wandered lang,
Heavy was my heart, and sad my sang;
Ae green sod covered a’ my kin,
There were storms without, and nae hope within,
When through the mist a sun-glint came,
And I heard a voice, and it aye said hame--
Hame, oh hame! is there rest for me
But an’ aneath the green willow tree?--BALLAD.
The Laird of Mossgray greeted Mrs Fendie and her daughter with his usual
old-fashioned, graceful politeness--there was something courtly in the
gentle bearing of the recluse old man--and said some kindly words of
recognition to all the younger personages present, except Hope, who, to
the great amazement of the little Fendies, continued steadily before the
bow-window, and did not turn round to receive the salutations of
Mossgray. Only a very few ordinary observations had been exchanged, when
the old man explained his errand.
“I have been seeking a young friend of mine in Cumberland,” said
Mossgray, in a voice whose tone of serene kindness thrilled on the ear
of Lilias Maxwell, like some familiar music, stilling her tears; “and I
have some idea, Mrs Fendie, that your kindness could assist me in my
search. I have just returned--”
Hope Oswald left her place by the window, and as Mossgray’s eye wandered
there, he suddenly stopped and started from his seat. Drawing back,
shivering and half afraid, Lilias looked at him, with tears trembling on
her long eyelash, and her white, transparent hand shading her eyes. She
was conscious of the presence of no other but himself for the moment,
and the strange contradiction of her look, which seemed half to appeal
to him for protection, and half to shrink from his scrutiny, confirmed
the old man in the sudden idea that this was his ward. Any resemblance
that she had to her mother was merely the indefinite and shadowy one,
which throws its strange link of kindred over faces which in form and
expression are not alike; but he could recognise the daughter of Lilias
Johnstone better in the pale, solitary orphan girl before him, than if
she had borne her mother’s blooming face, or seemed as full of elastic
youth and life as she did, when he saw her last. They stood looking at
each other for a moment, and then Mossgray advanced extending his hands.
“Lilias--Lilias Maxwell--that is your name?--and was it the dead, or was
it me, whom you distrusted, when you fled from the guardian your mother
committed you to?--This was ill-done, Lilias; but you have had weeping
and sorrow enough, my poor child, and now you must come home.”
Come home!--was there still such a word for the orphan?
She could not realize it; she sat down passively on the chair Hope
Oswald brought her, and spite of the large tears which fell silently now
and then, continued to fix her sorrowful eyes upon her mother’s friend.
The strange stupor she was in alarmed them all at last.
“Lilias--Lilias,”--repeated Mossgray, as he gently held her hand; but
Lilias did not speak. She had been denied the natural due and right of
grief; she had been hurried away from her mother’s grave, almost before
her desolate heart had been able to shed tears; and now the outraged
nature asserted itself:--the strained strength gave way.
At last the weeping came again in a flood, and Lilias awoke; awoke to
hear gentle tongues of women who had only cold words to say to her
before; and, gentlest of all, the old man’s voice, like some kind sound
which she had heard in dreams, and waking, yearned to hear again. And
the burden of its speech was ever home; it came upon her ear again and
again indistinct in every accent but that--what preceded and what
followed was lost to her bewildered sense, but the one word rang clearly
through the mist that enveloped her--she was to come home.
And so she did: Hope Oswald wrapped her humble shawl about her, and Mrs
Fendie, with her strangely changed voice, accompanied her to the door,
and there supported by Mossgray, she entered the carriage which had been
sent for, and was driven from the door, the old man sitting by her side.
Lilias could scarcely convince herself, until she had entered the room
at Mossgray called her own, that it was not all a dream.
The room had been prepared and ready for many days waiting for its
stranger guest. A little fire burned in the grate, and gave the look of
welcome, which the familiar living, kindly light does give at all
times; and through the small, clear panes of the window, the April sun
shone in, in the gentle joy of spring. The panelled walls were painted a
sombre quiet colour, but here and there were hung small pictures in
deep, rich, old-fashioned frames--pictures of such pure faces, saints
and angels, as seem now and then to have looked in upon the dreaming
sense of olden artists--not all gentle or serene, or at rest, but
speaking the common language of humanity; the constantly varying tongue,
in whose very weakness, of change and tremulous expression, lies its
might and charm.
Some books were arranged upon an old cabinet; books which are everywhere
familiar, the friends of all who are able for such fellowship; and some,
too, less universally appreciated, which were yet worthy of their place.
But Lilias did not then perceive these particulars of her guardian’s
delicate care for her. She sat down beside the window, and looked about
in a dream.
Before her lay the water, and its peaceful banks, with the charm of
youth upon them; beyond were scattered houses with the homelike wealth
of cultivated land around, the dwellings of those who, working with
honest hands, brought seed and bread out of the soil, as God did prosper
them. At her right hand the gray mass of the old warlike tower rose up
against the quiet sky, with the moss of peace upon its embattled walls.
Lilias had known all her life the fortunes of the poor--had wandered
hither and thither with her mother, following the devious track of the
weak father, who pursued without ceasing the fortune he had not firmness
to wait, or strength to work for; so that in many fair places where they
had been, the solitary woman and grave girl had longed to find a home
and abiding place, but had been able never. The hunted fortune fled
always further away, and the querulous, feeble nature, complaining with
fretful selfishness of his own ill-fate, seemed always constrained to
follow. Strangers and vagabonds they had been continually, and after the
brief repose of the widow and her child in the lonely Cumberland glen,
Lilias had felt, when she was hurried away in her earliest agony, that
thus it was to be for ever.
But now the atmosphere of home descended about her. Only the natural
successions of time, one generation going and another coming, had
changed the inmates of these walls. Steadily here upon its native
ground, the old house stood like a stately oak, which had shed its
acorns there, autumn after autumn, before human eye was near to see, and
should remain until the end. We do not think distinct thoughts at times
which form the crises of our life, and Lilias did not deliberately
reflect on this; but it struck strongly upon her through the mist of
sorrow and wonder she was in. This house, whose wealth was of the soil
below and the firmament above, whose inheritance was not of silver or of
gold, unproductive and barren, but of the fertile land, and the sunshine
and the rain of God; this was her home.
But sorrow had broken in her case the elastic nature of youth. Had she
remained among strangers, her stay must soon have had a not unusual end;
she would have endured for a while, and then have somewhere withdrawn
herself to die as her mother died, but bitterer to die alone. As it was,
Mossgray gained his ward only in time to save her; and all the summer
through Lilias had to be tended like a delicate flower. Vainly she
exerted herself and tried to be strong; vainly endeavoured to lessen the
anxious cares of her guardian; but it would not do. The springs of
youthful strength were stemmed in her worn-out heart. For a few days she
had been able convulsively to bind and keep her natural sorrow down; but
the reäction was vehement and long.
The lilies daily placed upon her table, the books of all pleasant kinds
which he constantly brought to her, the visitors whom, after a month or
two had elapsed, he tolerated, and indeed encouraged, for her sake--all
the gentle things the old man did, day by day, and hour by hour,
conspired to invigorate the broken mind of Lilias, and restore its tone
and power. She knew that he too grieved for the dead, and she felt that
it became her to render him some other return for his tenderness to
herself than those pale looks and tears; so conscientiously and
painfully she struggled to regain the cheerfulness becoming her years.
It was a hard task, for Lilias had not the elastic vitality which
springs up in renewed vigour from the prostration of grief--her nature
had much of pensive calm in it; but she struggled against her
overwhelming sorrow, and the very effort helped her to overcome.
Mrs Oswald visited her in kindly friendship, and Mrs Fendie came to
patronize, and suggest, and arrange. Mrs Fendie did not see how Miss
Maxwell could remain, unless Mr Graeme got some “experienced person,”
some presiding matron to make his house a proper residence for his
ward. Adam Graeme of Mossgray was sixty; he thought the countryside had
known him long enough and well enough to trust the daughter of Lilias
Johnstone in his hands, as confidently as though he had been her father;
and Mrs Oswald agreed with him.
And Lilias had at once secured the very warm friendship of Hope, who
already meditated making use of her in her grand scheme for the
elevation of Helen Buchanan, and the conversion of her father. To make
Miss Maxwell intimate with Helen, Hope decided in her very grave and
elaborate deliberations over the whole difficult question of her
father’s resolution and the means to overcome it, would be a great step
in advance, but it was decidedly impracticable at present; so Hope, like
a wise general, prepared the way with each by praising the other, and
suspended more practical operations.
Slowly the faint colour which was natural to her began to dawn upon the
white cheeks of Mossgray’s Lilias. The old man’s study in the tower was
almost deserted; the small projecting turret with its windowed roof
and wondrous telescope began to look forlorn and melancholy; the large
low room within lay whole days in gloomy silence; the famous chemic
tools of which the children of Fendie had heard thrilling whispers,
were gathering a gentle coat of dust. Their owner had experiments to
make of a kind more curious than those in which he used them. He was
discovering one by one the qualities of the human heart so strangely
given in charge to him--was discerning star after star rise upon her
firmament--patience, faith, hope--kindly human hope, which has somewhat
in this very world beside its riches in the world to come.
One autumn evening (for the summer was over before Lilias recovered her
strength) they went out together to the river-side. He was telling her
how it had been his fellow and companion all his days.
“There is something human in this running water,” said the old man. “So
we go on, Lilias, through our different stages, blind to what is to come
next, often unconscious of the pleasant places we travel through; but
though we chafe sometimes, and seem to pause and delay, how constantly
the stream runs on! I like it for its humanity--for all the light, and
all the darkness, and the winds that touch, and the rains that flood
it--for its beginning and for its end. It pleases me to give it life
and utterance, and think it human like myself.”
“You knew it when you were young, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “and it is
beside you still.”
She still felt this as something strangely gladdening; to dwell in one
place a lifetime; to appropriate it all; to have friendships with its
hills and its rivers; to feel that it was home.
“Yes,” said Mossgray, looking back at his old house as it lay in the
shade, from which the slanting light of the western sun had nearly
passed away, “yes, it is a happiness--it is a pleasant thread, this
river, on which to hang the memories of one’s life; there was no water,
Lilias, in your Cumberland glen?”
“Only a brook,” was the answer, “and we used to sit and watch it, for
its way was too steep to follow--and sometimes--”
Ah, that climbing sorrow! how it returned and returned again!
“But you have travelled,” said Mossgray, gently leading her from this
painful recollection; “you have scarcely gone so far as I have, but you
have seen many places:--let me hear of your wanderings, Lilias.”
“Have you been far away, Mossgray?”
“Very far,” said Mossgray, with a mournful smile, “and my furthest
journey was a very sad one; I went to seek a dear friend, and I found
him not--that was in India.”
“In India!” A flush of sudden light came over the face which turned to
him so earnestly.
“Yes. Are you interested in that great world, Lilias?”
“It must be a very great country indeed,” said Lilias, slowly, “where
the principal places are so far apart. Will you tell me where you were,
Mossgray?”
The old man smiled.
“I could have told you long since, had I known you cared for such a
subject. I was in Bombay, Lilias, and far into the interior beyond
Bombay.”
“In Bombay!” There was another flush of interest--the tall slight figure
had never looked so life-like, nor the form so animated.
“Yes, in Bombay--do you know anything of Bombay, Lilias?”
“No, no,” said Lilias, with a sudden blush, “I do not know--but I have
heard--we had a friend once who went there.”
She cast a sidelong, tremulous look upward to his face. He did not smile
as she feared he would. It pleased him to hear of the friend, and the
tone in which the friend was mentioned pleased him. He was glad there
was some one in the world, the name of whose habitation had power to
move the slumbering fountain of young life within her; he was glad that
in this present world she had some other tie than the new relationship
which bound her to himself, and in his delicate kindness he looked and
spoke gravely, to encourage her to confide in him.
“And you would like me to tell you about it. Would not reading do as
well?”
“No, no,” repeated Lilias; “the book does not live--you do not see the
eyes which saw those things you want to hear of, as I see yours,
Mossgray, and--the place is fine, is it not?”
“I think so,” was the answer; “yes, I remember that; but, Lilias, when I
was there, I was sick at heart--sick with anxiety at first--and sick
when I came away, with hope deferred--I should say with hope
extinguished. The calamity that maketh the heart sick, clouds a fair
landscape sadly, Lilias, and when I think of that beautiful eastern
country, I think of it as the grave of my friend.”
“Did he die?” asked Lilias, in the tremulous low voice, which for the
few preceding moments had been changed.
Mossgray paused. Thirty years had elapsed since colder men decided Hew
Murray’s fate, thirty years without a sign or token, the faintest that
hope could build on; and yet the old man hesitated to say he died.
“Lilias, I cannot tell. He was my dear friend; we were close brethren in
our youth; do you think he can have lived these thirty years, and given
no sign?”
“No, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “oh, no, no! I do not think it can be hard
to die; but to live while your dearest friends think you are dead--no,
no--it could not be!”
The old man sighed.
“Then he is dead,” he said.
There was a pause.
“And this friend of yours,” resumed Mossgray, at last, “he likes Bombay,
Lilias?”
The light came again more timidly.
“I think so--I mean, he does not _like_ it--it is not home--but--”
“But he thinks he will prosper there, and he is young, and has good
cause for his toil?”
Lilias looked at her guardian shyly again; but there was no ghost of
raillery on the kind face of Mossgray; he would have her think cheerily
of the young hopes of the labourer over the sea.
And Lilias looked away far into the distant air, and answered with a
voice so full and rich in its low music, that Mossgray scarcely knew it
for hers,--
“And for his mother’s sake.”