Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice. Oliphant Margaret
say criminal course, he is embarked on: and I have received from him, in return, letters that would melt your heart. Why he persists in what he acknowledges to be wrong, I cannot tell; and I do not defend him. He has got into the vortex, I suppose, and cannot extricate himself. But his father built up my fortunes, Mrs. Catherine, and so long as anything can be done, I will not forsake his son. This seasonable relief may save him: without this, his affairs are hopelessly entangled, and Strathoran must cease to be the home of the Sutherlands.”
Mrs. Catherine leaned her head upon her hand, and did not speak. At length, looking up, she saw, through the opposite window, Anne Ross and Lewis coming up the waterside, to the Tower.
“You will leave me a time, for further thought,” she said, slowly. “Put the papers out of yon keen gallant’s sight, or go into another room. You will hear tidings of your prodigal from Lewis, Mr. Ferguson; and doubtless you know him well enough, Walter, being birds of a feather. Euphan Morison, send lunch for the gentlemen into the dining-parlor, and tell Miss Ross I am waiting for her, in the little room.”
So speaking, Mrs. Catherine rose and left the library, her face shadowed with deeper gravity than was its wont – her step slow and heavy, and proceeded through many winding passages, to a locked door, in the furthest angle of the western wing. She opened it with a key which hung from her neck, and entered a small apartment furnished with the most meagre simplicity. It contained but two chairs and a small table, and from the deep diamond-paned window, you could only see the steep side of a hill, rough with whins and crags, which sprang sheer upward from the back of the Tower. Upon the wall hung a fine portrait – a noble, thoughtful, manly face, resembling Mrs. Catherine’s except in so far as its flush of strong manhood was different from the aspect of her declining years. It was her brother, whose untimely death had cast its heavy shadow over her own womanly maturity; and the room was Mrs. Catherine’s especial retirement, whither she was wont to come in her seasons of most solemn and secret prayerfulness, or at some crisis when her deliberations were grave enough to require the entire attention of her whole earnest mind. Upon the table lay a large Bible – other furniture or adornments there were none. In elder days, when the Douglases of the Tower professed the faith of Rome, it might have been called the lady’s oratory; in these plainer times it was only “the little room;” yet was surrounded with the awe, which must always environ the strugglings of a strong spirit, however faintly known to the weaker multitude around. Mrs. Catherine paced up and down its narrow limits, moved in her spirit, and expressing often her strong emotion aloud.
“Isabel Balfour,” she murmured to herself, stopping as she passed, to turn upon the picture a look of deep and sorrowful affection. “Ay, Sholto, it is her bairn, her firstborn, the son of her right hand. If ye were here, Sholto Douglas, where you should have been, but for God’s pleasure, what would you spare for Isabel’s son, that should have been yours also, and a Douglas? I envied you your bride and your bairns, Strathoran, for his sake that I left lying in foreign earth, and now your home is left to you desolate – woe’s me! woe’s me!”
Mrs. Catherine turned away and paced the room again, with quick and uneasy steps: “Unrighteous? I know it is unrighteous; but if he had been Sholto’s son, what would I not have done for him, short of sin? and he is Isabel’s – ”
A footstep approached, through the passage, as she spoke, and controlling herself instantly, Mrs. Catherine opened the door to admit Anne Ross.
“What is the matter?” exclaimed Anne, as she entered. “What has happened, Mrs. Catherine, that you are here?”
“Nothing, but that I am in a sore strait, and am needing counsel,” said Mrs. Catherine, closing the door; “sit down upon that seat, child, that I may speak to you.”
Anne silently took the chair, and Mrs. Catherine seated herself at the other side of the small table, with her dead brother’s picture looking down upon her from the wall.
“Anne,” she said, gravely, “you have heard the history of Sholto Douglas, and I need not begin and tell it here again. Look upon him there, in the picture, and see what manner of man he was. And you have heard of Isabel Balfour, the trysted bride of the dead, and how, when he had been in his grave but two twelvemonths, she was wedded to Strathoran. I blamed her not, Anne, though I myself was truer to the memory of my one brother; but wherefore am I speaking thus? There are two lads, Anne, to whom I may do service. One is, as I have heard, an honorable and upright young man, born to better fortune than he has inherited, and toiling manfully, as becomes the son of a good house; besides that, there is a kindred of blood between us. And the other is a rioter, wasting his substance, and dishonoring his name in a strange country. I am in a strait between, the two, which will I help, and which will I pass by?”
“Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne, anxiously, “what can I say? I fear that I can see whom you mean; but how can I advise?”
“The well-doing lad is James Aytoun, the brother of the bairn Alice,” said Mrs. Catherine, “who is working an honorable and just work to win back the inheritance of his fathers. The rioter is Isabel Balfour’s one son – that might have been your first-born, Sholto Douglas! and I am in a sore struggle between my reason and my liking. The boy has gotten in to my inmost heart, as if he had been truly Sholto’s son, and I cannot see him fall.”
There was a long silence – for many motives deterred Anne from attempting, what at any time she would have done with reluctance, to offer counsel to the clear and mature judgment of Mrs. Catherine; and she rightly judged that her ancient friend had all the strength of secretly-formed resolution to combat the scruples which Anne could not help sympathizing with, though in her also, so many kindly feelings pleaded for Archibald Sutherland – a prodigal, indeed, but still the frank and joyous comrade of her childish days, the “young Strathoran” of her native district.
At last, Mrs. Catherine rose.
“It must be done,” she exclaimed. “Bear me witness, Anne, that I do it against my judgment. I take the siller to feed the false wants of the waster, that should help the honorable man in his travail. I do it, knowing it is ill, but I cannot see the lad a ruined man. Let us away. I will blind myself with no more false reasonings; the thing is wrong, but we must do it – come!”
Anne followed without speaking. Mrs. Catherine locked the door, and, leaning on her heavily, led her up stairs. Alice Aytoun was in the drawing-room; Mrs. Catherine sent Anne thither, and went herself to seek for something in her own room. She had intended offering substantial help to James Aytoun, and now, when the warmth of her feelings for Archibald Sutherland baulked her benevolent intent, she turned with an involuntary impulse to make some atonement to Alice.
It had been a very dull morning for Alice – Mrs. Catherine was unusually grave at breakfast, and since breakfast Alice had been alone – then she saw Lewis and Anne walking arm-in-arm up Oranside to the Tower, and for a long half-hour had waited and wondered in tantalising loneliness, vainly expecting that they would join her, or she be summoned to them. But they did not come, and Alice, wearied and disappointed, was venting some girlish impatience on the piano, and indulging in a sort of fretful wish for home – quiet, affectionate home, where such slight neglects and forgetfulness never could take place – but, while the thought was being formed, Anne stood beside her.
“Oh! Miss Ross,” exclaimed Alice, “I thought you were never coming,” and through the fair curls the slightest side-glance was thrown to the closed door, which testified that Anne now came alone. “I saw you coming up by the water, and I have waited so long.”
“Mrs. Catherine had some business with me,” said Anne: “and Lewis, I think, is detained below with other visitors. And what do you think of our Strathoran now, Miss Aytoun?”
“Oh! a great deal,” said Alice; “only I have not seen Strathoran itself – Mr. Sutherland’s house – yet. I am to go to Falcon’s Craig, Mrs. Catherine says, after to-morrow. Miss Falconer was here yesterday – riding.”
“And you liked her, did you not?” said Anne, smiling.
Alice looked dubious.
“Yes, very well. But is she not more like a gentleman than a lady, Miss Ross?”
“Tell her so yourself