The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

“Eh, Huntley, God forgive me if I set more weight upon him than I should set!” said the Mistress, with tears; “no’ to your detriment, my own son; but look at the bairn! is he not his very image that’s gane?”

Not a single shadow of envy or displeasure crossed Huntley’s face; he stood looking at his young brother with a love almost as tender as their mother’s, with besides an unconscious swell of manhood and power in his own frame. He was the eldest brother, the head of the house, and the purest saint on earth could not have condemned the generous pride which rose in Huntley’s breast. It was not a weak effusion of sentimental self-sacrifice—his own hopes, his own heart, his own life, were strong with an individual identity in the young man’s nature. But the tender son of this house for the first time had made his own authoritative and masterly decision. To set aside his ambition and let it wait—to postpone fortune to labor—to do the first duty of a man on his own sole and unadvised responsibility—to provide for those of his own house, and set them above the anxieties of poverty. He was proud, when he thought of it, to feel the strength in his own arm, the vigor of his own step—but the pride was such as almost an angel might have shared.

When Huntley left the room, the Mistress called Cosmo to her side. She had resumed her seat by the corner window, and they could see him going out, disappearing behind the old castle walls, in the glory of the autumn sunset.

“Do you see him, Cosmo?” said the Mistress, with renewed tears, which this time were of mingled pride and tenderness; “I resisted, but I never wronged his thoughts. Do ye see your brother? Yonder he is, a young lad, proud, and bold, and masterful—he’s no’ like you—he has it in his heart to seek power, and riches, and honors, and to take pleasure in them—and he’s that daring that the chance of a battle would be more pleasant to Huntley than any thing in this world that was secure. Yet—do you hear me, laddie? he’s put them all aside, every ane, for the sake of this hame and name, and for you and me!”

And the color rose high upon the Mistress’s cheek in a flush of triumph; the necessity and blessing of women came upon her in a sudden flood—she could not be heroic herself, though she might covet the glory—but with a higher, tenderer, more delicious pride, she could rejoice and triumph in the courage of her boy. Her voice rose even in those restrained and moderate words of common speech as if in a song; there was an indescribable something in her tone which reminded one involuntarily of the old songs of Scripture, the old triumphant Hebrew parallelisms of Miriam and Deborah. She grasped Cosmo’s shoulder with an emphatic pressure, and pointed with the other hand to the retiring figure of Huntley, passing slowly and with a thoughtful step by the wall of the old castle. Cosmo leaned out beside her, catching a flush upon his delicate cheek from hers, but gazing upon the scene with a different eye. Insensibly the poetic glance of the boy left his brother, to dwell upon the other features of this picture before him. Those stern old walls with their windowless sockets, through which once the sunshine shone and the summer breezes entered to former generations of their name—that sweet evening glory of sunshine, pouring aslant in a lingering tender flood upon the world and the day, which it seemed sad to leave—that sunshine which never grew old—insensibly his own romance stole back into Cosmo’s mind. He forgot, with the inadvertence of his years, that it was not a romance agreeable to his mother, or that, even if it had been, she was not of a temper to bear the intrusion of other subjects when her mind was so fully occupied with concerns of her own.

“Mother, Huntley is right,” cried Cosmo; “Melmar can not be his if she is alive—it would not become him to seek it till he has sought her—and as Huntley can not seek her, for her sake and for my father’s, I will, though it should take the half of my life!”

Once more the Mistress’s face changed; a glance of fiery impatience flashed from her eyes, her cheek grew violently red, the tears dried as if by a spell, and she put Cosmo away hastily with the same arm which had held him.

“Get away to your plays, bairn—dinna trouble me!” cried the Mistress, with a harsh contempt, which was as strong as it was unjust; “to think I should open my heart to you that thinks of nothing but your romances and story books! Go! I’ve different things to think of—dinna trouble me!”

And she rose with a murmur of indignation and anger, and went hurriedly, with a flushed cheek, to seek her usual work, and take refuge in occupation. If the lost heiress had been her dearest friend, she would still have resented urgently the introduction of an intruder into her sudden burst of mother-pride. As it was, it overturned temper and patience entirely. She brushed past Cosmo with a hasty contempt, which humiliated and mortified the boy beyond expression. He did not attempt to justify himself—perhaps a kindred spark of resentment, and the bitterness with which youth appreciates injustice, helped to silence him—but when his mother resumed her seat and worked on hurriedly in a disdainful and angry silence, Cosmo withdrew out of the room and out of the house with a swelling heart. Too proud to betray how much he was wounded, he stole round behind the farm offices to his favorite perch among the ruins, where the lad brooded in mournful mood, sinking into the despairing despondency of his years and temperament, feeling himself misunderstood and unappreciated, and meditating a hundred melancholy heroisms. Mary of Melmar, so far, seemed as little propitious to Norlaw’s son as she had once been to Norlaw.

CHAPTER XXII

“Go wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please—I canna see a step before me, for my part—it’s you and no’ me that must take the lead,” said the Mistress, with a heavy sigh. These words were said as the little party, Huntley, Patrick and herself, were left standing by a little pile of luggage, in the dusk of a harvest evening, in front of the coach office on the Edinburgh pavement. They were on their way to Liverpool, from which place Huntley was to sail in an emigrant ship for Port Philip. Princes Street was full of the open-air and street-loving crowd which gives to that splendid promenade, on summer nights, so much of a continental aspect. The dusk of the twilight fell softly in the valley which lay behind, the lights in the high houses on the other side hung softly midway in the air, the voices of the passengers, and sounds of the city, though doubtless many of these were sad enough, mingled in the soft-shadowed air to a harmonious hum of pleasant sound, which echoed with a mocking gayety into the heavy heart of the mother who was about to part with her boys. She was bewildered for the moment with her journey, with the unknown place and unusual animation around her, and it was only very slowly and by degrees that her mind regained its usual self-possession. She stood gazing blankly round her, while the boys made arrangements about their superfluous packages, which were to be left at the coach office, and finally came up to her, carrying between them the little trunk which contained the necessaries for their journey. Cabs were not in those days, and the Mistress would have been horrified into perfect self-possession by the preposterous idea of “a noddy.” When they were thus far ready, she turned with them briskly enough, leading the way without any uncertainty, for, in spite of her exclamation, it had been already arranged where they were to go, and the Mistress had been at school in Edinburgh in her young days, and was by no means unacquainted with the town. They went along in this order—Mrs. Livingstone carrying a considerable bag on her own arm, and the young men with a trunk between them—across the North Bridge towards the old town, that scene of magic to every stranger; the valley, the hill, the dim gray turrets of Holyrood, the soft darkness of the night full of sounds, lying beneath them—the rugged outline, picturesque and noble, of the lofty old street before—the lights shining here and there like fairy stars in irregular specks among the high windows, and everywhere the half-seen, unrecognizable throng of wayfarers, and the world of subdued sound on every side made but small impression upon the absorbed minds of the little party. They knew it all before, and their thoughts were otherwise occupied; yet involuntarily that noble landscape, which no one could look upon with absolute indifference, soothed them all, in spite of themselves. Their destination was the High Street, where, in one of the more respectable closes, and at the top of an interminable ascent of stairs, there lived a native of Kirkbride, who was in the habit of letting lodgings to students, and with whom they were to find accommodation for the night. Mrs. Purdie gave to the Mistress a little room boasting a “concealed bed,” that is to say, a recess shut in by folding-doors, and just large enough to contain a bedstead, and to the lads a bed-closet, with a borrowed light, both of which inventions specially belong to the economy of flats and great subdivided houses, and are the most unfavorable features in the same. But the window of Mrs. Livingstone’s room, where they had tea, looked abroad over that great panorama, bounded by the gleam of the Firth, and the low green line of the Fife hills, which makes it worth while to ascend stairs and watch at lofty windows in Edinburgh. The yellow harvest moon had risen ere they had finished the simple meal, which none of them had any heart for, and Huntley drew his mother to the window to bid her look at the wonderful broad moonlight lying white upon the long line of street below, and thrusting out all the monuments of the little hill into bold and striking relief against the luminous sky. The Mistress turned away from the window, with big tears in her eyes.

“Eh, Huntley, laddie, what do I care? if it was the grandest view that ever was, do you think I could see it?” cried his mother, “when I ken that I’ll never see the light of the moon mair without weary thoughts and yearning to where my bairns are, hundreds and thousands of miles away from me!”

“But, mother, only till we come home,” said Huntley, with his arm round his mother, speaking low in her ear.

The Mistress only turned towards the dim little table, with its dim candles, hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes. This was endurable—but the night and the calm, and the glory of the heavens and the earth, were too much for the mother. If she had remained there looking out, it almost seemed to her as if she must have wept her very heart dry.

The next morning they set out once more upon their journey—another day’s travel by the canal to Glasgow. The canal was not to be despised in those days; it was cheaper, and it was not a great deal slower than the coach; and if the errand had been happier, the mode of traveling, in that lovely harvest weather, with its gradual glide and noiseless progress, was by no means an unpleasant one. Glasgow itself, a strange, unknown, smoky Babel, where, after Huntley was gone, the Mistress was to part with her second son, bewildered her mind completely with its first aspect; she could make nothing of it as they pursued their way from the canal to the river, through a maze of perplexing and noisy streets, where she felt assured hundreds of people might lose themselves, never to be found again. And, with a feeling half of awe and half of disgust, Mrs. Livingstone contemplated the place, so unlike the only other large town she knew, where Patie was to pass the next half dozen years of his life. Instinctively she caught closer hold of him, forgetting Huntley for the moment—Huntley’s dangers would be those of nature, the sea and the wilderness—but temptation! ill-doing! The Mistress grasped her son’s sleeve with tenacious fingers, and looked into his face with half an entreaty, half a defiance.

“If I should ever see the like of that in a bairn of mine!” she cried aloud, as they passed a corner where stood some of those precocious men, haggard and aged beyond double their years, whom it is the misfortune of a great town sometimes to produce. The idea struck her with an impatient dread which overcame even her half-apprehensive curiosity about the voyage they were going to undertake; and she had scarcely overcome this sudden alarm, when they embarked in the snorting steamer which was to convey them to Liverpool. Standing on the deck, surrounded by the pile of boxes which formed Huntley’s equipment, and looking with startled and disapproving eyes upon the arriving passengers, and the crowded sheds of the Broomielaw, the Mistress saw the same moon rising above the masts, and housetops, and smoke of Glasgow, without any thing like the same feelings which had moved her on the previous night. Her mind was excited, her active spirit stirred, her very nerves, steady as they were, influenced a little by the entirely new anticipation of the voyage; a night at sea!—it seemed almost as great looking forward to it as Huntley’s journey, though that was to the other end of the world.

And so they glided down the beautiful Clyde, the breeze freshening about them, as hills began to rise black in the moonlight, and little towns to glimmer on the water’s edge. The mother and the sons walked about the deck together, talking earnestly, and when the vessel rose upon the bigger waves, as they stole out to sea, and every thing but the water and the sky, and the moonlight, gradually sank out of sight, the Mistress, with a little thrill of danger and adventure at her heart, forgot for the moment how, presently, she should return alone by the same road, and almost could suppose that she was setting out with Huntley. The fancy restored her to herself: she was not much of an advice giver. Her very cautions and counsels, perhaps, were arbitrary and slightly impatient, like her nature; but she was their true mother, heart and soul; and the lads did not forget for long years after what the Mistress said as she paced about the deck between them, with a firm, yet sometimes uncertain foot, as the midnight glided into morning, and the river disappeared in the bigger waters of the sea.

CHAPTER XXIII

The voyage, as it happened, was a very favorable one—even the Mistress’s inland terrors were scarcely aroused by the swell of that summer sea; and Huntley himself, though his ideas expanded to a much longer journey, unconsciously took it as a good omen that his first night at sea should be so calm and fair. They came into the great seaport late on another summer evening. It was not nearly so extensive then as it is now, but still the masts were in forests, the ships in navies; and their inexperienced eyes, unenlightened by the hasty and darkling glimpse of the Clyde, and knowing nothing greater or busier than the Forth, with its great bosom diversified by an island and a sail, the one scarcely more plentiful than the other, opened wide with amazement at the fleet of vessels in the Mersey. Insensibly to herself, the Mistress drew a certain comfort from the fact, as the Glasgow steamer went gliding up the river, in the late summer sunset. Ships were moored in the deep calm and shadow of the banks; ships were coming and going in the midwaters of the river, and lines of spars and masts, indistinguishable and without number, fringed the whole water edge, from which the smoke of the town, reddened by a last ray of sunshine, rose inland, out of sight, in a great overhanging cloud. The sight of such a throng brought a momentary comfort to the heart of Huntley’s mother. The very sea, it almost seemed, could not be so lonely, when all these big wayfarers, and thousands more, were tracking its waters day by day.

“Mony a mother’s son is there,” she said to herself softly, as she stood gazing about her—and even the community of hardship had a solace in it. As the steamboat puffed and snorted to its destination, a big ship, crowded with pensive faces, bare of sails, and tugged along by a little steamer, came lumbering silently along through the peaceful evening light, going out to sea. Two or three voices round announced it “an emigrant ship,” and the Mistress gazed into it and after it, clasping her son’s arm with a thrill at her heart. Evening; the sweet daylight fading into a charmed and tender twilight—the sky growing pale with very calm; the houses and churches and piles of buildings beginning to stand out black against the colorless, mysterious light which casts no shadows; the water gleaming in long, still ripples, as pale as the sky—every thing softening and darkening into natural rest—yet, through all, the great ship departing silently, with her throng of travelers, beginning to unfold the sails of her wayfaring, beginning to vibrate to the quickening wave, as she neared the sea.

“God go with them!” said the Mistress, with a sob out of her full heart. “Oh, Huntley, laddie! mony a mother’s son is there!”

The landing, when they came to it; the rush of porters and vagabonds from the pier; the half light, in which it seemed doubly necessary to the Mistress, roused into prompt and vigorous self-defense, to keep the most vigilant watch on the luggage—and the confusion with which both mother and sons contemplated the screaming, shouting crowd who surrounded them with offers of service, and bawled to them from the shore, made altogether a very serious business of the arrival. The Mistress never knew how she came through that ordeal; the “English tongue,” which had a decidedly Irish brogue in that scene, and under these circumstances, deafened the rural Scottish woman. The crowd of spectators, and the foray upon everybody’s luggage made by some scores of ragged fellows, whom her uncharitable imagination set down as robbers or madmen, filled her with indignation and a strong propensity to resistance; and it was not till she found herself safely deposited in an odd little sitting-room of a little inn, close to the docks, with all her packages safe and undiminished, that a measure of calmness returned to the ruffled bosom of Mrs. Livingstone. Then, after they had rested and refreshed themselves, Huntley and Patrick went out with natural curiosity to see the new scene and the new country—for the whole party fully considered that it was “England,” not Liverpool, in which they now found themselves—and the Mistress was left alone. She sat in the little parlor under the unfamiliar gas-light, looking round with forlorn eyes upon the room. There was a little model of a ship upon the mantel-piece in front of the little mirror, and another upon a small side-table under the barometer; other odd little ornaments, such as sailors bring home, shells and curious boxes, and little painted glass cups of Dutch art, gave a very nautical aspect to the shabby apartment, which, further, bore traces of having recently been smoked in, which disgusted the Mistress. Then all the noises of a noisy and not very well-behaved quarter seemed to rise up to her window, mingled with a jar of music from a big blazing drinking-place, almost next door—and the private tumult of the inn itself, voices and footsteps, shutting of doors and ringing of bells, still further oppressed the solitary stranger.

“Mercy on me! is that what they ca’ speaking English?” cried the Mistress to herself, disturbed, lonely, sick at heart, and almost offended with her sons for leaving her. She put her hands to her ears with a gesture of disdain; the unfamiliar accent was quite an aggravation and insult to her solitude—and then her thoughts settled down upon the circumstances which brought her here. But a day or two more, and she might never see Huntley again.

Meanwhile the boys were straying through the mean, noisy streets, blazing with light, which only showed their squalor the more, where a whole disreputable population seemed to be exerting all its arts for the fascination of the sailors, who were the patrons and support of all this quarter. It was quite a new phase of life to the lads, fresh from their rural solitudes, and all the proprieties of a respectable Scottish family—but the novelty beguiled them on, though it disgusted them. They went wandering about, curious, astonished, revolted, till they found themselves among dark mazes of warehouses from which it was not easy to find their way back. When they did get back it was late, though the noise remained undiminished, and the Mistress’s temper was not improved, if truth must be told, by her solitude. She had been trying to look out from the window, where opposite there was nothing but the high brick walls of the docks, and beneath, upon the lighted pavement, only such scenes as horrified the soul of the Mistress within her.

“It’s a marvel to me what pleasure even thoughtless laddies could find wandering about a place like that,” said the Mistress; “England, quotha! I thought mysel’ there must be something worth seeing in a place that folk make such a wark about; but instead of that, it’s waur than the Cowgate; pity me! and sharp tongues that gang through my head like a bell!”

“But Liverpool is not England,” said Huntley, coming to a slow perception of that fact, and laughing at himself as he said it.

“And maybe this is not Liverpool,” said Patie, with still greater enlightenment.

“Hold your peace, bairns,” cried the Mistress, peremptorily; “what can you ken, twa laddies that have no more insight into life than babes unborn—how can the like of you tell? Do I no’ see sin outbye there with a painted face, and sounds of fiddling and laughing, and light enough to burn up the haill town? Eh, bairns, if ever ye touch such dirt with but the ends of your fingers, the mother that bore ye will think shame of ye—burning shame! It sounds like pleasure—do ye hear?—but it’s no pleasure, it’s destruction!—and I canna tell, for my ain part, how a decent woman can daur to close her e’en, kenning what evil’s nigh. But I’m no’ meaning that for you,” added the Mistress, changing her tone; “the like of you young things need sleep and rest, and though I canna tell where we’re to get the things we want in a miserable place like this, we’ll have to be stirring early the morn.”

“And we’ll find a better place,” said Huntley; “don’t be afraid, mother—but for that and all the rest that we have to do and to bear, you must try to rest yourself.”

“Aye, laddie,” said the Mistress, hurriedly wiping her eyes, “but I canna get my thoughts out of that ship that’s on the sea this nicht! and maybe mony a lone woman sitting still with nae sons to come in to her—and whiles I canna but mind what’s coming to mysel’.”

“I am only twenty, mother, and Patie but eighteen,” said Huntley; “would you like us to remain as we are, knowing nothing of life, as you say? or are you afraid to trust your sons in the battle, like other men?”

“Na! no’ me!” cried the Mistress; “you’re baith right, and I approve in my mind—but only just this, bairns;—I’m your mother—and yon ship is sailing in the dark before my very e’en, as plain as if I saw her now!”

And whether it was thinking of that ship, or of the sons of other mothers who were errant in her, or of her own boy, so soon to join their journey, the Mistress heard the last sound that disturbed the house that night, and the earliest in the morning. Her eyes were dry and sore when she got up to see the daylight aspect of the unknown and unlovely world around her; and the lads were still fast asleep in their privilege of youth, while their mother stood once more wistfully looking out upon the high black wall of the dock, and the masts appearing over it. She could not see the river, or any thing more gracious than this seaman-tempting street. There was nothing either within or without to divert her from her own thoughts; and as she watched the early sunshine brighten upon a scene so different from that of her own hills and streams, these thoughts were forlorn enough.

During the day, the little party went out to make some last purchases for Huntley. The young man was to carry with him, in the securest form which they could think of, a little fortune of a hundred pounds, on which he was to make his start in the world, nothing doubting to find in it a nucleus of wealth; and the Mistress, spite of the natural economy of her ideas, and her long habit of frugality, was extravagant and lavish in her anxiety to get every thing for Huntley that he could or might require. When they came into the region of shops, she began to drop behind, anxiously studying the windows, tempted by many a possible convenience, which, if she had acted on her first impulse and purchased each incontinently, would have made Huntley’s outfit an unbelievable accumulation of peddlery.