The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

“Ane can bear mony a thing in good daylight, when a’ the work’s in hand,” Marget said; “but womenfolk think lang at night, when there’s nae blythe step sounding ower the door, nor tired man coming hame.” And though she never said the same words, the same thought was in the Mistress’s heart.

One of these slow nights was coming tardily to a close, when Cosmo, who had been gathering up his courage, having finished his book on the hearth-rug, where the boy half sat and half reclined, rose suddenly and came to his mother at the table. Perhaps some similar thoughts of her own had prepared the Mistress to anticipate what he was about to say. She did not love to be forestalled, and, before Cosmo spoke, answered with some impatience to the purpose in his eye.

“I ken very well what you’re going to say. Weel, I wot the night’s lang, and the house is quiet—mair folk than you can see that,” said the Mistress, “and you’re a restless spirit, though I did not think it of you. Cosmo, do you ken what I would like you to do?”

“I could guess, mother,” said the boy.

“Ay, ’deed, and ye could object. I might have learned that,” said his mother.

“I’ve got little of my ain will a’ my life, though a fremd person would tell you I was a positive woman. Most things I’ve set my heart on have come to naught. Norlaw’s near out of our hands, and Huntley and Patie are in the ends of the earth, and I’m a widow woman, desolate of my bairns; weel, weel, I’m no complaining—but when I saw you first in your cradle, Cosmo—you were the bonniest of a’ my bairns—I put my hands on your head, and I said to myself—‘I’ll make him my offering to the Lord, because he’s the fairest lamb of a’.’ Na, laddie—never mind, I’m no heeding. You needna put your arms round me. It’s near seventeen year ago, and mony a weary day since then, but I’ve aye thought upon my vow.”

“Mother, if I can, I’ll fulfill it!” cried Cosmo; “but how could I know your heart was in it, when you never spoke of it before?”

“Na,” said the Mistress, restraining herself with an effort. “I’ve done my best to bring you up in the fear of the Lord, and it’s no written that you maun be a minister, before you can serve Him. I’ll no’ put a burden on your conscience; but just I was a witless woman, and didna mind when I saw the bairn in the cradle that before it came that length, it would have a will of its own.”

“Send me to college, mother!” said Cosmo, with tears in his eyes. “I have made no plans, and if I had I could change them—and at the worst, if we find I can not be a minister, I will never forget your vow—put your hands on my head and say it over again.”

But when the boy knelt down at her side with the enthusiasm of his temper, and lifted his glowing, youthful face, full of a generous young emotion, which was only too generous and ready to be swayed by the influences of love, the Mistress could only bend over him with a silent burst of tenderness.

“God bless my dearest bairn!” she said at last, with her broken voice. “But no, no!—I’ve learned wisdom. The Lord make ye a’ His ain servants—every ane—I can say nae mair.”

CHAPTER XXIX

It was accordingly but a very short time after these occurrences when Cosmo, with his wardrobe carefully over-looked, his “new blacks” supplemented by a coarser every-day suit, which took the place of the jacket which the lad had outgrown, and a splendid stock of linen, home-made, snow-white and bleached on the gowans—took his way to Edinburgh in all the budding glory of a student. In those days few people had begun to speculate whether the Scotch Universities were or were not as good as the English ones, or what might be the characteristic differences of the two. The academic glories of Edinburgh still existed in the fresh glories of tradition, if they had begun to decline in reality—and chairs were still held in the northern college by men at whose feet statesmen had learned philosophy.

The manner in which Cosmo Livingstone went to college was not one, however, in which anybody goes to Maudlin or Trinity. The lad went to take up his humble lodging at Mrs. Purdie’s in the High Street, and from thence dropped shyly to the college, paid his fees and matriculated, and there was an end of it. There were no rooms to look after, no tutors to see, no “men” to be made acquainted with. He had a letter in his pocket to one of the professors, and one to the minister of one of the lesser city churches. His abode was to be the same little room with the “concealed bed” and window overlooking the town, in which his mother had rested as she passed through Edinburgh, and the honest Kirkbride woman, who was his landlady, had been already engaged at a moderate weekly rate to procure all that he wanted for him.

After which fashion—feeling very shy and lonely, somewhat embarrassed by the new coat which his mother called a surtoo and regarded with respect, dismayed by the necessity of entering shops and making purchases for himself, and standing a little in awe of the other students and of the breakfast to which the professor had invited him—Cosmo began the battle of his life.

He was now nearly seventeen, young enough to be left by himself in that little lantern and watch-house hanging high over the picturesque heights and hollows of the beautiful old town, where the lad sat at his window in the winter evenings, watching the gorgeous frosty sunset, how it purpled with royal gleams and shadows all the low hills of Fife, and shed a distant golden glow—sometimes a glow redder and fiercer than gold—upon the chilly glories of the Firth. Then, as the light faded from the western horizon, and Inchkeith and Inchcolm no longer stood out in vivid relief against the illuminated waters, how the lights of the town, scarcely less fairy-like, began to steal along the streets and to sparkle out in the windows, hanging in irregular lines from the many-storied houses at the other side of the North Bridge, and gleaming like glow-worms in the dark little valley between.

Cosmo sat at his window with a book in his hand, but did not read much—perhaps the lad was not thinking much either, as he sat in the silent little room, listening to all the voices of all the population beneath him, which rose in a softened swell of sound to his high window; sometimes mournful, sometimes joyful, sometimes with a sharp cry in it like an appeal to God, sometimes full of distinct tones, inarticulate yet individual, sometimes sweet with the hum of children—a great, full, murmuring chorus never entirely silenced, in which the heart of humanity seemed, somehow, to betray itself, and reveal unawares the unspeakable blending of emotions which no one man can ever confess for himself.

Cosmo, who had spent a due portion of his time in his class-room, had taken notes of the lectures, and been, if not a remarkably devoted, at least a moderately conscientious student, often found himself very unwilling to light the candle, and sometimes even let his fire go out, in the charmed idleness of his window-seat, which was so strangely different from his old meditative haunt in the old castle, yet which absorbed him even more—and then Mrs. Purdie would come in with brisk good-humor, and rate him soundly for sitting in the dark, and make up the much-enduring northern coals into a blaze for him, and sweep the hearth, and light the candle, and bring in the little tray with its little tea-pot and blue and white cup and saucer, and the bread and butter—which Cosmo did full justice to, in spite of his dreams. When she came to remove the things again, Mrs. Purdie would stand with one arm a-kimbo to have a little talk with her young lodger; perhaps to tell him that she had seen the Melrose courier, or met somebody newly arrived by the coach from Kirkbride, or encountered an old neighbor, who “speered very kindly” for his mother; or, on the other hand, to confide to him her fear that the lad from the Highlants in her little garret overhead, who provided himsel’, would perish with cauld in this frosty weather, and was just as like as no’ to starve himsel’, and didna keep up a decent outside, puir callant, without mony a sair pinch that naebody kent onything about; or that her other lodger, who was also a student, was in a very ill way, coming in at a’ the hours of the night, and spending hard-won siller, and that she would be very glad to let his father and mother ken, but it didna become her to tell tales.

These, and a great many other communications of the same kind, Mrs. Purdie relieved her mind by making to Cosmo, whose youth and good-looks and local claims upon her regard, made him a great favorite with the kind-hearted, childless woman, who compounded “scones” for his tea, and even occasionally undertook the trouble of a pudding, “a great fash and fyke,” as she said to herself, puddings being little in favor with humble Scotchwomen of her class.

Under the care of this motherly attendant, Cosmo got on very well in his little Edinburgh lodging, and even in some degree enjoyed the solitude which was so new and so strange to the home-bred boy. He used to sally out early in the morning, perhaps to climb as far as St. Anthony’s Chapel, or mount the iron ribs of the Crags, to watch the early mists breaking over the lovely country, and old Edinburgh rising out of the cloud like a queen—or perhaps only to hasten along the cheerful length of Princes Street, when the same mists parted from the crags of the Castle, or lay white in the valley. The boy knew nothing about his own sentiments, what manner of fancies they were, and did not pause to inquire whether any one else thought like him. He hurried in thereafter to breakfast, fresh and blooming, and then with his books to college, encountering often enough that grave, gaunt Highlander in the garret, who had no time for poetic wanderings, and perhaps not much capacity, but who struggled on towards his own aim, with a desperate fortitude and courage, which no man of his name ever surpassed in a forlorn hope, or on a battle-field. The Highland student was nearly thirty, a man full grown and labor-hardened, working his way through his “humanity” and Divinity classes, looking forward, as the goal of his ambition, to some little Gaelic-speaking parish in the far north, where some day, perhaps, the burning Celtic fervor, imprisoned under his slow English speech and impenetrable demeanor, might make him the prophet of his district; and as he entered day by day at the same academic gates, side-by-side with the seventeen-year-old boy, a strange tenderness for the lad came into the man’s heart. They grew friends shyly yet warmly, unlike as they were, though Cosmo never was admitted to any of those secrets of his friend’s menage, which Mrs. Purdie guessed at, but which Cameron would never have forgiven any one for finding out; and next to the household of Norlaw, and the strange, half-perceived knowledge that came stealing to his mind, like a fairy, in his vigils by his window, Cameron was Cosmo’s first experience of what he was to meet in life.

The Highlander lived in his garret, you could not believe or understand how, gentleman-commoner—and would have tossed, not only your shoes, but you out of his high window, had you tried to be benevolent to him, as you tried it once to that clumsy sizar of Pembroke; notwithstanding, he was no ignoble beginning for a boy’s friendship, a fact which Cosmo Livingstone had it in him to perceive.

CHAPTER XXX

“I mean to call on Miss Logan at the manse to-day,” said Patricia Huntley, as she took her place with great dignity in “the carriage,” which she had previously employed Joanna to bully Melmar into ordering for her conveyance. Mrs. Huntley was too great an invalid to make calls, and Aunt Jean was perfectly impracticable as a companion, so Patricia armed herself with her mother’s card-case, and set out alone.

Alone, save for the society of Joanna, who was glad enough of a little locomotion, but did not much enjoy the call-making portion of the enterprise. Joanna, whom no pains, it was agreed, could persuade into looking genteel, had her red hair put up in bows under her big bonnet, and a large fur tippet on her shoulders. Her brown merino frock was short, as Joanna’s frocks invariably became after a few weeks’ wearing; and the abundant display of ankle appearing under it said more for the strength than the elegance of its proprietor. Patricia, for her part, wore a colored silk cloak, perfectly shapeless, and as long as her dress, with holes for her arms, and a tippet of ermine to complete it. It was a dress which was very much admired, and “quite the fashion” in those days; when the benighted individuals who wore such vestments actually supposed themselves as well-dressed as we have the comfort of knowing ourselves now.

“For I am sure,” said Patricia, as they drove along towards Kirkbride, “that there is some mystery going on. I am quite sure of it. I never will forget how shamefully papa treated me that day Mr. Cassilis was at Melmar—before a stranger and a gentleman too! and you know as well as I do, Joanna, how often that poor creature, Whitelaw, from Melrose, has been at our house since then.”

“Yes, I know,” said Joanna, carelessly. “I wonder what Katie Logan will say when she knows I’m going to school?”

“What a selfish thing you are, always thinking about your own concerns,” said Patricia; “do you hear what I say? I think there’s a mystery—I’m sure there’s a secret—either papa is not the right proprietor, or somebody else has a claim, or there’s something wrong. He is always making us uncomfortable some way or other; wouldn’t it be dreadful if we were all ruined and brought to poverty at the end?”

“Ruined and brought to poverty? it would be very good fun to see what mamma and you would do,” cried the irreverent Joanna. “I could do plenty things; but I’m no’ feared—it’s you, that’s always reading story-books.”

“It’s not a story-book; I almost heard papa say it,” said Patricia, reddening slightly.

“Then you’ve been listening!” cried her bolder sister. “I would scorn to do that. I would ask him like a man what it was, if it was me, but I wouldna go stealing about the passages like a thief. I wouldna do it for twice Melmar—nor for all the secrets in the world!”

“I wish you would not be so violent, Joanna! my poor nerves can not stand it,” said Patricia; “a thoughtless creature like you never looks for any information, but I’m older, and I know we’ve no fortunes but what papa can give us, and we need to think of ourselves. Think, Joanna, if you can think. If anybody were to take Melmar from papa, what would become of you and me?”

“You and me!” the girl cried, in great excitement. “I would think of Oswald and papa himsel’, if it was true. Me! I could nurse bairns, or keep a school, or go to Australia, like Huntley Livingstone. I’m no’ feared! and it would be fun to watch you, what you would do. But if papa had cheated anybody and was found out—oh, Patricia! could you think of yourself instead of thinking on that?”

“When a man does wrong, and ruins his family, he has no right to look for any thing else,” said Patricia.

“I would hate him,” cried Joanna, vehemently, “but I wouldna forsake him—but it’s all havers; we’ve been at Melmar almost as long as I can mind, and never any one heard tell of it before.”

“I mean to hear what Katie Logan says—for Mr. Cassilis is her cousin,” said Patricia, “and just look, there she is, on the road, tying little Isabel’s bonnet. She’s just as sure to be an old maid as can be—look how prim she is! and never once looking to see what carriage it is, as if carriages were common at the manse. Don’t call her Katie, Joanna; call her Miss Logan; I mean to show her that there is a difference between us and the minister’s daughter at Kirkbride.”

“And I mean no such thing,” cried Joanna, with her head half out at the window; “she’s worth the whole of us put together, except Oswald and Auntie Jean. Katie! Katie Logan! we’re going to the manse to see you—oh don’t run away!”

The day was February, cold but sunny, and the manse parlor was almost as bright in this wintry weather as it had been in summer. The fire sparkled and crackled with an exhilaration in the sound as well as the warmth and glow it made, and the sunshine shone in at the end window, through the leafless branches, with a ruddy wintry cheerfulness, which brightened one’s thoughts like good news or a positive pleasure. There were no stockings or pinafores to be mended, but instead, a pretty covered basket, holding all Katie’s needles and thread, and scraps of work in safe and orderly retirement, and at the bright window, in an old-fashioned china flower-pot, a little group of snow-drops, the earliest possibility of blossom, hung their pale heads in the light. Joanna Huntley threw herself into the minister’s own easy-chair with a riotous expression of pleasure.

“Fires never burn as if they liked to burn in Melmar,” cried Joanna; “oh, Katie Logan, what do you do to yours? for every thing looks as if something pleasant happened here every day.”

“Something pleasant is always happening,” said Katie, with a smile.

“It depends upon what people think pleasure,” said Patricia. “I am sure you that have so much to do, and all your little brothers and sisters to look after, and no society, should be worse off than me and Joanna; but it’s very seldom that any thing pleasant happens to us.”

“Never mind her, Katie. Listen to me. I’m going to Edinburgh to school,” cried Joanna. “I don’t know whether to like it or to be angry. What would you do, if you were me?”

“I don’t think I could fancy myself you, Joanna,” said Katie, laughing; “but I should have liked it when I was younger, and had less to do. I’m to go in with papa if he goes to the Assembly this May. We have friends in Edinburgh, and I like it for that—besides the Assembly and all the things country folk see there.”

“But Edinburgh is a very poor place after being in London,” said Patricia; “if you could only see Clapham, where I was at school! But Mr. Cassilis is a cousin of yours—is he not? I suppose he told you how papa behaved to me when he was last at Melmar.”

“No, indeed—he did not,” said Katie, with some curiosity.

“Oh! I thought perhaps he noticed it, being a stranger,” said Patricia; “do you know what was his business with papa?”

“No.”

“You might tell us—for we ought to hear, if it is any thing important,” said Patricia; “and as for papa, he never lets us know any thing till everybody else has heard it first. I am sure it was some business, and business which made papa as cross as possible; do tell us what it was.”

“I don’t know any thing about it,” said Katie. “My cousin staid here only two or three days, and he never spoke of business to me.”

“Oh! but you know what he came here about,” insisted Patricia.

“He came to see us, and also—oh, yes—to manage something for the Livingstones, of Norlaw,” said Katie, with a slight increase of color.

For the moment she had actually forgotten this last and more important reason for the visit of the young lawyer, having a rather uncomfortable impression that “to see us” was a more urgent inducement to Cousin Charlie than it had better be. She paused accordingly with a slight embarrassment, and began to busy herself opening her work basket. Patricia Huntley was not a person of the liveliest intelligence in general, but she was quick-sighted enough to see that Katie stumbled in her statement, and drew up her small shoulders instantly with two distinct sentiments of jealous offense and disapproval, the first relating to the presumption of the minister’s daughter in appropriating the visit of Cassilis to herself, and the second to a suggestion of the possible rivalry, which could affect the house of Melmar in the family of Norlaw.

“I think we are never to be done with these Livingstones,” cried Patricia, “and all because the old man owed papa a quantity of money. We can’t help it when people owe us money, and I am sure I am very much surprised at Mr. Cassilis, if he came to annoy papa about a thing like that. I thought he was a gentleman! I thought it must be something important he came to say.”

“Perhaps it might be,” said Katie, quietly, coloring rather more, but losing her embarrassment; “and the more important it was, the less likely is it that my cousin would tell it to any one whom it did not concern. Mr. Huntley could answer your questions better than I.”

“Oh, I see you’re quite offended. I see you’re quite offended. I am sure I did not know Mr. Cassilis was any particular kind of cousin,” said Patricia, spitefully. “If I had known I should have taken care how I spoke; but if my papa was like yours, and was not very able to afford a housekeeper, it would need to be another sort of a man from Mr. Cassilis who could make me go away and leave my home.”

“Katie, you should flyte upon her,” said Joanna. “She does not understand any thing else—never mind her—talk to me—are all the Livingstones away but Cosmo? Patricia thinks there’s a mystery and papa’s wronged somebody. If he has, it’s Norlaw.”

“I don’t think any thing of the sort—hold your tongue, Joanna,” said her sister.

“Eh, what else?” cried the young lady, roused to recrimination. “Katie, do you think Mrs. Livingstone knows? for I would go and ask her in a minute. I would not forsake papa if he was poor, but if he’s wronged anybody, I’ll no’ stand it—for it would be my blame as well as his the moment I knew!”

“I don’t think you have any thing to do with it,” said Katie, with spirit, “nor Patricia either. Girls were not set up to keep watch over their fathers and mothers; are you the constable at Melmar, Joanna, to keep everybody in order? I wish you were at the manse sometimes when the boys have a holiday. Our Johnnie would be a match for you. The Livingstones are all away,—Cosmo, too; he’s gone to college in Edinburgh, and some day, perhaps, you’ll hear him preach in Kirkbride.”

“I am quite sure papa would not give him the presentation; he’s promised it to a cousin of our own,” said Patricia, eagerly.

Katie grew very red, and then very pale.

“My father is minister of Kirkbride,” she said, with a great deal of simple dignity; “there is no presentation in anybody’s power just now.”

“Katie, I wish you would not speak to her, she’s a cat!” cried Joanna, with intense disgust, turning her back upon her sister; “oh I wish you would write Cosmo to come and see me! I’ll be just the same as at college, too; and I’m sure I’ll like him a great deal better than any of the girls. Or, never mind; if that’s not right, I’ll be sure to meet him in the street. I’m to go next week, Katie, and there’s a French governess and a German master, and an Italian master, and nothing but vexation and trouble. It’s quite true, and we’re not even to speak our own tongue, but jabber away at French from morning to night. English is far better—I know I’ll quarrel with them a’.”

“Do you call your language English, Joanna?” said her sister, with contempt.

“If it’s no’ English it’s Scotch, and that’s far better,” cried Joanna, with an angry blush; “wha cares for English? They never say their r’s and their h’s, except when they shouldna say them, and they never win the day except by guile, and they canna do a thing out of their own head till Scotsmen show them how! and it’s a’ true, and I’d rather be a servant-maid in Melmar, than one of your Clapham fine ladies, so you needna speak your English either to Katie or me.”

And it must be confessed that Katie, sensible as she was, laughed and applauded, and that poor little Patricia, who could find nothing heroical to say on behalf of Clapham, was very much disposed to cry with vexation, and only covered her defeat by a retreat to the carriage, where Joanna followed, only after a few minutes’ additional conversation with Katie, who was by no means disposed to aid the elder sister. When they were gone, however, Katie Logan shook her wise little elder-sisterly head over the pair of them. She thought if Charlie (which diminutive in the manse meant Charlotte) and Isabel grew up like Patricia and Joanna, she would “break her heart;” and the little mistress of the manse went into the kitchen to oversee the progress of a birthday cake and give her homely orders, without once thinking of the superior grandeur of the carriage, as it rolled down the slope of the brae and through the village, the scene of a continued and not very temperate quarrel between the two daughters of Melmar, which was only finished at last by the sudden giving way of Patricia’s nerves and breath, to the most uncomfortable triumph of Joanna. Joanna kept sulkily in her corner, and refused to alight while the other calls were made. On the whole, it was not a very delightful drive.