Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

Alice did not like all this. “I wonder at you, Miss Falconer! I am sure it is far better to be what you call proper than – ” Alice hesitated; “I mean, no one thinks Mrs. Catherine, and Mrs. Coulter, and Miss Ross weak, because they are always like what ladies should be.”

Miss Falconer laughed. “Well done, my little Mentor; but, for all that, confess that I was of more service to-day, with my good stout arm, than if I had been always like what ladies should be. Miss Lumsden is staying with me at the Craig: I had a bold purpose of getting my poor mother’s old phæton hunted up, and driving her over to see you; but we cannot compass a vehicle, we Falconers, so I had to give it up. It is just as well. Miss Lumsden (she’s John Lumsden’s sister, of Portoran,) would have been shocked. I shall take your advice, little Miss Aytoun; I shall abstain from shocking people unnecessarily, after this, when I can help it.”

This was better: the little matron elect was pleased to have her advice taken, and so ventured further. “And, Miss Falconer, don’t be angry – wouldn’t it be better not to speak so? I don’t like – I mean Anne Ross does not like – she says it makes foolish people laugh, and be impertinent.”

Miss Falconer’s face became crimson. Miss Falconer drew up her tall, handsome figure, to its full height, and looked haughty for a moment. Alice was afraid.

“There! that will do. You will be able to give gentle reproofs, by-and-by, beautifully: only you must not experiment on me much, you know, lest I should grow angry. No, no; do not lift up those blue eyes of yours so pitifully. I am not angry now – but I am sometimes, and I should not like you to see me so.”

The straightforward little Alice looked up in wonder, fancying that the blunt, strong, unschooled mind beside her, might be in the habit of giving way to ungovernable and wild fits of passion, such as she had read of; it was all a mistake. Marjory Falconer was by no means so rude and unfeminine as she gave herself credit for being, and had bitter compunctions of outraged delicacy sometimes, after those masculine speeches, which revenged her womanhood completely. But the little world of Strathoran did not know that – did not know either how the strong and healthful spirit of the motherless, ill-educated girl was forcing itself through a rough process of development, and, like other strong plants, was rank and wild in its growth, and needed vigorous pruning – pruning which it would not fail, by-and-by, to manage for itself, with an unhesitating hand.

So the youthful people of Strathoran laughed, and the elders hung back, and called her improper and unfeminine; and thus the original evil was increased by the grievance of which she herself complained; she was left to the company of men – men, moreover, of that rude, uncultured, sportsman class, her own superiority over whom she felt bitterly, and asserted with characteristic vehemence.

Alice Aytoun saw, when her visitor was gone, still more visibly than she had done in the morning, that Mrs. Catherine was sad. – She could not help observing the long, wistful looks bestowed upon herself – the hundred little indulgences which Mrs. Catherine gave her that day, as she would have given them to a sick child; and Alice wondered. These steadfast, compassionate looks became painful at last, and there was so great a chill of gravity and sadness about the stranger, Archibald Sutherland, that Alice, carried that tremulous happiness of hers – so much deeper, and yet so much less exuberant than it had been one little month ago – into her own pretty room.

Bessie sat there sewing, and disconsolate. Johnnie Halflin had protested vehemently last night that “the Tower wadna be like itsel when she gaed away.” The Falcon’s Craig groom had particularly distinguished little Bessie by his notice. Mr. Foreman’s lad from Portoran had bidden her “be sure and come soon back again,” when he shook hands with her. Jacky, with her eldritch voice, had attempted to sing ‘Bessie Bell’ in her honor – and to leave it all! So little Bessie sat sentimental and despondent in the room, with some vision of breaking hearts, and never being happy again, while her youthful mistress sat down by the window, and looked over to Merkland.

Ah! that breadth of hazy air which hovered between the house of Merkland and Alice Aytoun’s chamber window, how full of beautiful shapes it was – and how instinct with gladness! Mrs. Catherine dined at four – never later, except on some very great and solemn occasion; and when dinner was over that day, and the darkness of the long January night had begun, Mrs. Catherine took her youthful kinswoman by the arm, and led her away from the dining-room without speaking. They did not go up stairs; they went away through that dim passage, and stopped at the door of the little room. Alice was terrified. Mrs. Catherine unlocked the door, drew the girl in with her, and closed it again in silence. Alice’s heart began to beat loud, in awe and terror. What strange discipline was this?

There was a fire burning brightly; the waning gloaming without gave the whins, that almost touched the window, a ghostly look. The gray crag above seemed to be looking in with a pale, withered, inquisitive face. Mrs. Catherine seated herself on one of the chairs and bade Alice take the other. The firelight fell warm and bright upon that fine dark portrait on the opposite wall. There was a lamp upon the table, but it was not lighted. Alice sat trembling, silent, apprehensive. What could Mrs. Catherine have to tell her?

“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “do you see that picture?”

“Yes,” said Alice, timidly.

The light was hovering about it, shooting now a spark of radiance into the eye, and now moving in a strange, fantastic smile upon the lip. Alice had heard from some of the visitors at the Tower of Mrs. Catherine’s brother, and knew that this was his portrait.

“Ye ken who it is? – my one brother, Sholto Douglas,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Look at him well. Do you see how strong, and full of health, and strength, and youth that face is, Alison? Look at him well.”

Alice looked again wonderingly at the fine face of Sholto Douglas. To her, as to Archibald Sutherland, it looked loftily calm and pure, removed far above all the changeful hopes and fears of this “pleasing, anxious being.”

“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “I want to tell you the history of Sholto Douglas. Sit quiet, and do not tremble, but listen to me.”

Alice tried not to tremble – she could scarcely help it. The ghostly inquisitive crag, behind which she could fancy some malicious elf watching them – the dark whins pressing close to the window – the dreary sough of the wind as it swept through the bare trees without, and the long passages within, moaning so eerie and spirit-like – the calm, unmoved face looking down from the wall – the comparative gloom of this sacred and mysterious apartment – she could not repress the involuntary thrill of fear and wonder.

“Sholto Douglas was my one brother – we were the sole children of our name,” said Mrs. Catherine, her utterance so slow and marked the while, that it was easy to recognise this as the history of her great sorrow, “and I cannot tell you how dear we were to one another. You are a bairn, yourself, of too gentle and quiet a spirit. You cannot know the loves and griefs of harsher natures.

“We were never separate a day; we were bairns; we grew up into youth; we passed to manhood and to womanhood hand in hand. In his earliest flush of strength and manliness, Sholto was arrested on the way. I am a woman now laden with years, and drawing near to the grave, but, bairn, there is no earthly motive that would rouse me to any work or labor like the remembrance of my brother Sholto, that I left lying in foreign earth, thirty years ago.

“That is not the matter I have to speak of first. When Sholto Douglas was in the strength of his youthful manhood he was trysted in solemn betrothal, whereof I myself was a witness, to Isabel Balfour, the mother of the young man who came to my house last night. She was a gentle, pleasant, gladsome girl, like your own self, Alison Aytoun. I liked her well before for her own sake, and I liked her dearly then for Sholto’s. The day was set for the bridal – the whole kindred were stirred to do them honor – there was nothing in their way, but joy, and blessings, and prosperity, as we thought in our vain hope. Alison! between them there was the stern and sore shadow of death, and they knew it not!

“A week before his bridal day, Sholto came home from Edinburgh a stricken man. I read it in the doctor’s face that came to see him first. I saw it in the blood they took from him, till he was worn and wasted to a shadow. The burning heat of his inflammation was on him the day that should have been his bridal day – and when he rose from that bed it was only to sink into the terrible beauty of decline – with all its dreams of health, and wild hopes, and sick delusions. Be thankful, bairn, that no such weird is laid upon you.

“I saw him dying before me day by day. Into my heart there had never mortal man entered but Sholto, my one brother; and in his prime of youth, with hopes thick about his brow like the clusters of his hair, was the Lord parting him from me. I could not hope – when Isabel leant upon his chair, and looked into his face – his cheek with its bright color, and his glorious e’en – and smiled and rejoiced, and said he would be well, I turned from her, my heart within me sick unto death. I knew he was a doomed man – I saw there was no hope.

“They said at last that the air of some sunnier country would heal him of his trouble, and I prepared for the journey; anxiously I pleaded with Isabel to go with us, that he might have the comfort of her presence. Her kindred would not let her – she thought it not needful herself, neither did he: they would meet again, he said, so soon in health and gladness. I turned away from him – my heart was bursting. I kent they would never meet again – I kent that I took him away to die.

“Alison, I saw the parting of the two. I saw the sick hope in Isabel Balfour’s face, and the wan courage in Sholto’s – their hearts misgave them at that moment. There is a shadow of fear upon all partings, and it was deepened upon theirs. As for me, my sky could not well be darker – it was not fear with me, but a deadly knowledge. I kent they would never meet again.

“And so I went away with him – guarding the young man that had been so strong and healthful, from every blast of wind, as ye would guard a sick bairn. I went with him to Italy – to France – syne when he got no stronger – I took him away to that sunny island in the sea, where so many are sent to die. His doom was upon him – the light was in his eye more glorious than ever, the hectic was burning on his cheek. What was the soft air and the beautiful days, in comparison with the might of death. He died. I saw him laid in the cold earth of a foreign country, far away from the grave of his fathers, and turned in my desolation to come back to my own country, my lane.

“Alison! you do not ken the blackness of darkness, the shadow of that terrible wing of death. Think of it – think of my desolate journey – think of my first parting with my one brother. Could ye have borne a woe like that?”

Alice was weeping – she had forgot herself and Lewis for the moment. Her gentle heart could not fathom the stern depths of suffering, which still swelled in Mrs. Catherine’s larger spirit, but she recognized the sovereignty of grief, and answered with her tears:

“And there was the bride to come home to – the desolate bride, that had been dreaming vain dreams of pleasantness and hope to come. A year before you would have thought that if ever there were two fated to a bountiful and gladsome lot, it was Sholto Douglas and his trysted bride. Now, she was stricken down in her first agony, and he was lying in his stranger grave.

“Know you, Alison, that there are woes like that wherever there are living men? – that there is some shadow on every lot, how fair soever, may be its beginning? – that even the like of you, in your youth and smiles, have a weird to watch and weep through, every one of you for her own self, and not another?”

Alice looked up – the tears stealing over her cheeks, the “hysterica passio” swelling up in its “climbing sorrow” in her tightened breast. Her blue eyes looked fearfully and anxiously in Mrs. Catherine’s face. This most sad history, Alice felt, was the preface of some personal evil to herself, some misfortune to Lewis. She could not speak – she only looked imploringly in sad fear and wonder into the face of her kinswoman.

“My poor bairn!” said Mrs. Catherine, “you can think how Isabel mourned in her dark solitude? ye can feel for Isabel?”

Alice started up, all her gay hopes and girlish happiness floating away before that blast, as such light things will float, and threw herself unconsciously at Mrs. Catherine’s feet, kneeling there in incoherent grief and terror, and burying her fair head in the lap of her kinswoman: “What is it – what is it? I will bear it – tell me what it is.”

Mrs. Catherine’s hand lay upon her fair hair in grave kindness. Mrs. Catherine bent down. “Alison! wherefore did ye not tell me of this unhappy tryste, that has been made between Lewis Ross and you?”

Alice could not look up; trembling through all her slight figure, she waited for the next words.

“My bairn! my poor fatherless bairn! if there was but any weight on my gray head that could keep off this sore stroke from your’s! It is your appointed weird; ye must be strong, and listen to me. In the fulness of their joy and hope, it pleased the Lord to sunder for ever, in this world, the two I have told you of. Alison! there lies as deadly a bar between Lewis Ross and you; a bar that can never be passed, or lifted away in this life. You may hear of his welfare and prosperity, and he of yours; but in this world you must be strangers. It cannot last a day, this link between you; you cannot go a step further in this perilous road, Alison!”

One great convulsive throb had shaken the slender frame that leant upon Mrs. Catherine’s knee. There was a moment’s pause, and then Alice rose, her tears dashed away, yet still noiselessly welling out, and a momentary flush of womanly pride inspiring her girlish figure. “He might have told me himself,” she exclaimed, passionately. “He need not have been afraid; I – I am not so foolish – I can bear it – my heart will not break; he had no right to think – he might have told me himself!”

Mrs. Catherine rose, and put her arm round her. The girl turned away, and endeavored to release herself; endeavoring vainly also to hide the large hot tears, that, spite of pride and resentment, were falling passionately again.

“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “the youth did not ken himself. I cannot deny him justice, though I have little wish that you should think of him more. He did not know himself. It will fall as heavily on him as it does on you.”

Alice endeavored again to free herself, her tears flowing more gently, and the weight and oppression at once lifted off her youthful heart. So long as change did not come upon either herself or Lewis, what were external obstacles to them, in their triumphant hope and affection? But injured pride, and outraged feelings, made her reject Mrs. Catherine’s offered kindness. Why should she interpose between these two?

“Alison,” said Mrs. Catherine, “listen to me. If Lewis’s heart were brimming full with the greatest love that ever was in the heart of mortal man, and if you yourself were clinging to him as never woman clung before, yet must ye part: there is no hope – no choice. Before ever you were born, there was a deadly bar laid between Lewis Ross and you. It cannot be passed: there is no hand in this world that can lift it away: it is as unchangeable as death. Bairn, I am speaking to you most sorrowfully. I would not, for all my land, have laid this burden on your young head, if there had been either help or choice: there is none. You must be parted. Alison, look at me.”

Alison looked wistfully through her tears at the strongly-marked stern face, now so strangely moved and melted. She saw the steadfast, sorrowful, compassionate look, in which there was no hope; and, yielding to the pressure of the encircling arm, leaned her head upon Mrs. Catherine’s shoulder, and nestled into her breast like a grieved child.

By-and-by, they had returned to their original positions. Mrs. Catherine seated herself in her chair again, and Alice glided down passively, and lay like a broken lily, with her head hidden in Mrs. Catherine’s lap. She was stunned and overpowered. The gentle heart lay in a kind of stupor, a dead and vacant sleep; she hardly felt it beat. The hope, and shame, and anger, the very wonder and grief, seemed gone; yet in her crushed apathy, she listened – the faintest word, uttered near, would not have been lost on the ears so nervously awake to every sound. She was waiting for further confirmation of the strange fate pronounced upon her.

“Are you content?” said Mrs. Catherine, lifting the fair head tenderly in her hand – ”are you content to believe me, my poor bairn, and to give up the gladness of your youth? Speak to me, Alison. I have maybe been harsher than I should be with your gentle nature, and I am asking you to make a sore sacrifice. For the sake of your kindly mother, Alice; for the sake of your honorable and upright brother James: for the memory’s sake of your dead father, whom you never saw, I ask you to give up this stranger lad. He was nothing to you three months ago. They have nourished you, and cherished you, all the days of your life. Believe me, Alison, my bairn, that what I have told you is true; and, for their sake, give up this Lewis Ross. The bar between you is deadly and unchangeable: you cannot pass it over, were you to wait a lifetime.”

Alice lifted her wan cheek from Mrs. Catherine’s knee, and looked up with sad, beseeching eyes. “What is it? Tell me what it is?”

“It might do you ill, but it could not do you good,” said Mrs. Catherine. “Take my word, Alison, and give me your promise. It is a thing that cannot change – that nothing in this world can make amends for. Alison, it is your weird – it has been laid on you, to prove what strength you have. You must make the sacrifice, hard though it be.”

“I have not any strength,” murmured poor little Alice, in her plaintive, complaining voice: “I am not strong, and there is no one with me. Mrs. Catherine, what is it? Tell me what it is?”

“Bairn,” said Mrs. Catherine, “you would need to be strong to listen to the story, and I have withheld it to spare you. You are but a frail, young, silly thing, to have such troubles shadowing you; but it may be most merciful, in the end, to let you ken it all. Listen to me.” Mrs. Catherine paused for a moment, and then resumed: “You have heard tell of your father, and how he died a violent death? Alison Aytoun, did you ever hear who it was that killed him?”

Alice shivered, and glanced up in trembling wonder. Mrs. Catherine went on: “The name of him was Norman Rutherford. He was a young man, as gallant and as generous as ever breathed mortal breath. Why he was left to himself in so dreadful a way, I cannot tell. It will never be known on this earth. Alison Aytoun, are you hearing me? Norman Rutherford, your father’s murderer, was the nearest kindred of Lewis Ross; he was his brother!”

A long, low cry of pain, involuntary and unconscious, came from Alice Aytoun’s lips. She turned from Mrs. Catherine’s lap, and covered her face with her hands. There was nothing more to say or to hope; and the mist and film of her first sorrow blinded and stilled the girlish heart, which beat so gay and high when that dull morning rose.

By-and-by, she had wandered up stairs, and was in her own room alone. The room was dim, and cheerless, and cold, she thought; and Alice laid herself down upon her bed, and hid her sad, white face in the pillow, and silently wept. The girlish light heart sank down under its sudden burthen, without another struggle. “I am not strong,” murmured little Alice; “and there is no one with me.”

There was no one with her. Never before had any misfortune come to her youthful knowledge, which could not be shared. Now the shrinking, delicate spirit, half child, half woman, had entered into the very depths of a woe which must be borne alone. The dull, leaden darkness gathered round her; the tears flowed over her white cheek in a continuous stream; and into the dim, disconsolate air the plaintive young voice sounded sadly, instinctively calling on its mother’s name. Alice was alone!