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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story," Mrs. Oliphant weaves a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of 19th-century Scotland, exploring themes of duty, love, and societal expectations. The prose is rich and evocative, combining a keen sense of place with penetrating psychological insight into the characters' lives. Mrs. Oliphant's literary style merges romanticism with realism, offering a captivating portrayal of the Scottish landscape and its cultural intricacies while reflecting the broader context of Victorian literature, where moral and social dilemmas are carefully examined. Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, a prominent Scottish author of the Victorian era, was known for her ability to articulate the complexities of her time, often drawing upon her own experiences of loss and resilience. Her extensive writings, steeped in a delicate understanding of the human condition, reveal a woman who navigated the limitations placed upon her by society, particularly in her role as a widow. This background profoundly influenced her storytelling, allowing her to infuse depth and authenticity into her characters and narratives. Recommended for those with an interest in historical fiction and Scottish culture, "The Laird of Norlaw" provides a rich tapestry of emotion and moral inquiry. This novel is not only a journey through the rugged beauty of Scotland but also an invitation to reflect upon the timeless struggles of the human spirit. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, The Laird of Norlaw traces the tug-of-war between inherited obligation and the fragile hope of self-made futures.
Mrs. Oliphant’s novel belongs to the Victorian tradition of domestic and regional realism, unfolding as a Scottish story rooted in place, community, and family life. Published in the later 1850s, it reflects the social texture of its time while remaining accessible to modern readers. The setting is unmistakably Scottish, with the title signaling a world of lairds, fields, and village ties that shape every choice its characters make. Within this framework, Oliphant examines how status, custom, and moral expectation intersect, crafting a narrative that is attentive to local color without sacrificing broader human concerns.
The premise centers on a household identified with Norlaw, an inheritance that is as much burden as blessing. In early chapters, shifts in fortune and reputation prompt a reckoning with what it means to preserve a name and make one’s own path. Readers encounter domestic scenes, village conversations, and the quiet dramas of everyday decision, all presented with clear-eyed sympathy. The book offers a largely realist, character-driven experience: measured in pace, rich in observation, and anchored in the emotional stakes of a family navigating change. Without announcing grand adventures, it turns the ordinary into a canvas for moral testing.
Oliphant writes with a composed, omniscient voice that favors texture over spectacle, detailing rooms, fields, and social rituals with steady attention. Her tone balances compassion and restraint, allowing tensions to build through choices and consequences rather than melodramatic twists. Dialogue and description work together to suggest the rhythms of Scottish life, and the narrative often pauses to weigh competing duties without prescribing easy answers. The overall mood is thoughtful, occasionally wry, and grounded in the practical realities of work, kinship, and reputation, inviting readers to inhabit a community whose values and pressures feel both specific and widely recognizable.
Themes of inheritance, responsibility, and social mobility drive the book’s central questions. Oliphant explores how young people fashion identities under the gaze of kin and neighbors, how ambition can coexist with loyalty, and where integrity resides when money and name are at stake. Education and self-improvement figure as aspirations within a framework of expectation, while gender roles and class boundaries shape the horizon of possibility. Religious sensibility informs conscience and conduct without turning the narrative into a doctrinal study. The result is a portrait of moral growth that resists caricature, attentive to small acts of courage and the costs of compromise.
For contemporary readers, The Laird of Norlaw resonates in its attention to intergenerational hopes and pressures, the fragility of economic security, and the quest to reconcile personal calling with communal bonds. It considers what we owe to our origins and how we might transform that legacy without betraying it. The novel also offers a study in how social narratives—about success, respectability, and belonging—shape private decisions. In this respect, Oliphant’s mid-nineteenth-century world speaks to ongoing debates about class mobility, family duty, and the ethics of ambition, presenting them in intimate, humane terms rather than abstract argument.
Approached today, the novel promises a reflective reading experience: a patient unfolding of character, steady moral inquiry, and the pleasures of a vividly evoked Scottish milieu. Readers who appreciate Victorian domestic fiction will find the satisfactions of layered motives, nuanced social observation, and a story that trusts everyday life to carry its drama. Without spoiling its developments, one can say that the journey from constraint to possibility is traced with tact and emotional intelligence. The Laird of Norlaw invites engagement not through sensational turns but through the deeper suspense of how people become themselves under the weight—and guidance—of tradition.
Synopsis
The Laird of Norlaw opens in a quiet Lowland parish, where the modest estate of Norlaw anchors a close-knit Scottish community. The laird is a kindly, improvident gentleman whose household includes a steadfast wife and three sons growing into very different natures. The old tower on the property, half-romantic relic and half-ruin, looms as both symbol and refuge. Village rhythms, church life, and neighborly ties frame the family’s days, establishing a domestic world of duty, pride, and fragile security. Early chapters delineate the estate’s precarious finances and the family’s reliance on reputation and goodwill, setting the stage for trials that will alter their standing.
A sudden illness brings the laird’s death, exposing longstanding debts and legal vulnerabilities the family had only dimly understood. A stern creditor and a wary lawyer press their claims, and the household is forced to relinquish comfort and status. Retreating from the house to humbler quarters near the ancient tower, the widow steers her sons through practical economies and bruised pride. The change unsettles local perceptions and tests alliances across the parish. Under the pressure of accounts, mortgages, and obligations, the narrative tightens around hard choices, as the sons confront work, study, and the burden of restoring a name now overshadowed by loss.
The widow’s quiet resolve becomes the family’s anchor. The eldest son embraces responsibility, seeking any honest occupation that might sustain them. The middle brother weighs prospects beyond the parish, tempted by trade or distant opportunity. The youngest, sensitive and imaginative, turns toward scholarship and the uncertain promise of letters. Their differing temperaments create a practical division of labor, yet a shared loyalty binds them to Norlaw’s memory and to their mother’s steadfastness. Scenes of village life and counsel from clergy and neighbors emphasize a culture where character is currency. With limited means, the family cultivates discipline and hope, measuring success in small, cumulative victories.
Complications arise when whispers about the late laird’s past surface, suggesting an earlier entanglement that may cast doubt on inheritance and honor. A foreign lady and her daughter, linked by rumor to Norlaw, bring moral and legal questions into view. Old papers, letters, and testimonies hint at a private history the laird never fully disclosed. The tower, long a picturesque landmark, becomes a literal and figurative repository of secrets. This thread reframes the family’s struggle: beyond paying debts, they must face the possibility that their claim to position rests on uncertain ground, and that justice may demand more than endurance and thrift.
Seeking to contribute, the youngest son departs first to a Scottish city and later to London, hoping to earn through his pen what land can no longer provide. Boarding-house economies, editors’ offices, and the uneven market of periodical writing test resilience and pride. Small successes, rebuffs, and late-night labor mark his apprenticeship. Letters home sustain the tie to Norlaw, and a handful of mentors and friends model integrity amid literary hustle. City chapters contrast bustle with remembered fields, showing how ambition can sharpen purpose without severing roots. The pursuit of authorship becomes both personal calling and practical means to aid the family.
At home, the mother and brothers navigate legal negotiations, seasonal work, and shifting village judgments. The creditor’s representatives press for final settlement, while neighbors, some sympathetic and some censorious, watch the family’s every step. A gentle friendship develops between one son and a local young woman, tender yet restrained by circumstance. Domestic scenes highlight careful economies and a dignity that refuses self-pity. The parish minister, a few shrewd elders, and loyal servants provide commentary and counsel. The Norlaw household learns to balance pride with prudence, sustaining their identity not through title but through service, reliability, and mutual forbearance.
As the legal tangle deepens, new evidence is tracked across correspondence, archives, and distant witnesses. A journey beyond the parish—partly a search for truth, partly a test of loyalty—brings the central questions into sharper relief: what the laird promised, what was owed, and who has rightful claim. Confrontations are civil but charged, with antagonists citing law and the protagonists appealing to equity and conscience. The youngest son’s progress in letters intersects with these demands, drawing him into decisions that risk reputation for the sake of fairness. The narrative crescendos toward a reckoning that must honor both fact and feeling.
The strands converge in measured revelations that clarify the laird’s past and fix the terms of present duty. Choices are made that weigh mercy against strict entitlement, and the family’s response becomes a test of the very virtues they have long professed. Fortunes shift, not by dramatic windfall, but through recognition, restitution, and earned respect. Relations with rivals and neighbors settle into new, more truthful alignments. Without sensational reversals, the conclusion of these conflicts reshapes prospects for the sons and restores a platform from which they can work. The emphasis remains on character proved under strain rather than triumph untested.
The novel closes with a tempered assurance that integrity, perseverance, and familial loyalty outlast temporary loss. It presents lairdship as a moral vocation rather than merely a legal title, grounded in care for place and people. The Scottish setting—its kirk, customs, and cautious affections—inflects every choice, making community both witness and measure of worth. The youngest son’s modest literary footing suggests new paths for sustaining honor when land no longer suffices. Ultimately, The Laird of Norlaw conveys that stability is rebuilt through truth-telling, steady labor, and magnanimity, offering a quiet, hopeful resolution consistent with the story’s domestic scale and ethical concerns.
Historical Context
Mrs. Oliphant situates The Laird of Norlaw in the Scottish Lowlands, evocative of the Borders landscape along the Tweed, during the mid-Victorian decades (roughly the 1830s–1850s). The setting centers on a modest lairdship—a small estate and its village dependencies—within reach of Edinburgh’s expanding orbit. Rural kinship ties, parish institutions, and heritable landholding frame daily life, while tradesmen and tenants constitute the social fabric around the house of Norlaw. The time is marked by economic uncertainty for minor gentry, growing urban influence, and denominational contention, each intruding upon a world still governed by custom, patronage, and the moral discipline of the kirk. The novel’s domestic crises are thus embedded in this specific Scottish milieu.
The most determinative historical backdrop is the pressure on small lairdships created by debt, primogeniture, and the Scottish law of entail. Before reform, entails bound estates to a family line, limiting sale or mortgage and often trapping heirs in inherited liabilities. Agricultural volatility in the “Hungry Forties,” intensified by the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws, depressed prices and destabilized credit secured on land (heritable bonds and wadsets). The Entail Amendment (Scotland) Act 1848 (the Rutherfurd Act) permitted disentail to sell land and pay creditors, reshaping proprietorial Scotland. The Laird of Norlaw’s plot—heirs confronting a decayed, encumbered estate—mirrors these legal-economic realities, dramatizing how family honor and solvency collided with restrictive inheritance and post-1848 avenues for liquidation.
The Disruption of 1843 divided the Church of Scotland when 474 ministers, led by Thomas Chalmers, left the Established Church in Edinburgh on 18 May 1843 to found the Free Church over patronage and spiritual independence. By 1847, the Free Church had erected hundreds of new kirks and schools, reorganizing parish authority across the Lowlands and Highlands alike. This upheaval altered local governance, education, and poor relief oversight, and recalibrated the laird’s traditional influence as heritor and patron. The novel’s depiction of parish life—elders, ministers, and the laird’s moral standing—reflects a community negotiating ecclesiastical allegiance and social authority in the aftermath of the schism.
The Poor Law (Scotland) Act of 1845 created parochial boards and a central Board of Supervision in Edinburgh, formalizing assessments and poorhouses while widening medical aid. It shifted responsibility from informal kirk-session charity to a bureaucratic apparatus, with contested boundaries between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. In rural districts, lairds were ratepayers and often board members, linking estate economy to welfare policy. The novel’s concern with obligation, reputation, and the fall from gentility resonates with a system that both institutionalized relief and intensified scrutiny; characters’ fortunes, when threatened by debt or illness, are filtered through the new mechanisms that recast communal support as assessed, audited duty.
Transport revolution further reconfigured Lowland life. The North British Railway, incorporated in 1844, opened the Edinburgh–Berwick line in 1846 and, by the early 1850s, extended branch routes into Borders market towns, shrinking distances to the capital. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway (1842) and expanding networks fed a print economy and professional opportunities unavailable in remote parishes. Young Scots could commute or migrate to clerical, mercantile, or journalistic work. The novel’s movement between rural estate and urban sphere—letters, newspapers, and city sojourns—reflects this railway-enabled mobility, by which heirs of failing lairdships sought education, income, and reputational rescue in Edinburgh and beyond.
Industrial growth in the Borders—especially woolen manufacture in Hawick and Galashiels—transformed regional society from the 1830s through the 1850s. Mechanized mills, powered by water and then steam, produced tweeds and worsteds that captured British and export markets; populations in mill towns surged, and a confident middle class of manufacturers emerged. This burgeoning commercial culture challenged the primacy of land as the sole marker of status. The novel’s juxtaposition of the worn, debt-laden house of Norlaw with thriving trades and professional life parallels the historical shift, where capital, skill, and enterprise could outstrip lineage, and where tenants or shopkeepers might wield greater liquidity than impoverished lairds.
Mass emigration offered another escape from economic constraint. Between 1841 and 1861, over 300,000 Scots are estimated to have emigrated, many from Lowland towns to Canada, the United States, and, after the 1851 gold discovery, Victoria in Australia; the Allan Line (founded 1852) made transatlantic routes from Glasgow routine. Networks of kin and parish facilitated remittances and chain migration. The novel’s thematic openness to departure—whether temporary moves to cities or the imagined leap overseas—echoes this period’s calculus of opportunity versus obligation. Characters’ talk of fresh starts, new markets, and moral renewal maps onto the real pathways that lured debt-burdened families from ancestral acres to imperial and Atlantic worlds.
As social critique, the book exposes the precariousness of minor gentry sustained by reputation rather than solvency, indicting primogeniture and entail when they perpetuate debt and deny prudent adjustment. It questions the laird’s residual patronage in a society where ecclesiastical authority is divided and welfare is bureaucratized, revealing gaps in poor relief and the stigma that shadows downward mobility. By staging collisions between landed honor and commercial competence, parish conscience and legal expediency, the narrative scrutinizes class boundaries and the moral economy of credit. It thereby registers mid-century Scotland’s transition, challenging complacent hierarchies and urging responsibility over inherited privilege.
The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story
CHAPTER I.
The house of Norlaw stands upon the slope of a low hill, under shelter of the three mystic Eildons[2], and not very far from that little ancient town which, in the language of the author of “Waverley,” is called Kennaquhair[1].
A low, peaceable, fertile slope, bearing trees to its top-most height, and corn on its shoulders, with a little river running by its base, which manages, after many circuits, to wind its way into Tweed. The house, which is built low upon the hill, is two stories in front, but, owing to the unequal level, only one behind. The garden is all at the back, where the ground is sheltered, but in front, the green, natural surface of the hill descends softly to the water without any thing to break its verdure. There are clumps of trees on each side, straying as nature planted them, but nothing adorns the sloping lawn, which is not called a lawn, nor used for any purposes of ornament by the household of Norlaw.
Close by, at the right hand of this homely house, stands an extraordinary foil to its serenity and peacefulness. The old castle of Norlaw, gaunt and bare, and windowless, not a towered and battlemented pile, but a straight, square, savage mass of masonry, with windows pierced high up in its walls in even rows, like a prison, and the gray stone-work below, as high under the first range of windows as the roof of the modern house, rising up blank, like a rock, without the slightest break or opening. To see this strange old ruin, in the very heart of the peaceful country, without a feature of nature to correspond with its sullen strength, nor a circumstance to suggest the times and the danger which made that necessary, is the strangest thing in the world; all the more that the ground has no special capacities for defense, and that the castle is not a picturesque baronial accumulation of turrets and battlements, but a big, austere, fortified dwelling-house, which modern engineering could make an end of in half a day.
It showed, however, if it did nothing better, that the Livingstones were knights and gentlemen, in the day when the Border was an unquiet habitation—and for this, if for nothing else, was held in no little honor by the yeoman Livingstone, direct descendant of the Sir Rodericks and Sir Anthonys, who farmed the remains of his paternal property, and dwelt in the modern house of Norlaw.
This house was little more than a farm-house in appearance, and nothing more in reality. The door opened into a square hall, on either side of which was a large room, with three deep-set windows in each; four of these windows looked out upon the lawn and the water, while one broke each corner of the outer wall. On the side nearest the castle, a little behind the front level of the house, was an “outshot,” a little wing built to the side, which formed the kitchen, upon the ever-open door of which the corner window of the common family sitting room kept up a vigilant inspection. A plentiful number of bed-chambers up-stairs were reached by a good stair-case, and a gallery which encircled the hall; the architecture was of the most monotonous and simple regularity; so many windows on one side soberly poising so many windows on the other. The stair-case made a rounded projection at the back of the house, which was surmounted by a steep little turret roof, blue-slated, and bearing a tiny vane for its crown, after the fashion of the countryside; and this, which glimmered pleasantly among the garden fruit trees when you looked down from the top of the hill—and the one-storied projection, which was the kitchen, were the only two features which broke the perfect plainness and uniformity of the house.
But though it was July when this history begins, the flush of summer—and though the sunshine was sweet upon the trees and the water, and the bare old walls of the castle, there was little animation in Norlaw. The blinds were drawn up in the east room, the best apartment—though the sun streamed in at the end window, and “the Mistress” was not wont to leave her favorite carpet to the tender mercies of that bright intruder; and the blinds were down in the dining-room, which nobody had entered this morning, and where even the Mistress’s chair and little table in the corner window could not keep a vicarious watch upon the kitchen door. It was not needful; the two maids were very quiet, and not disposed to amuse themselves. Marget, the elder one, who was the byrewoman[3], and had responsibilities, went about the kitchen very solemnly, speaking with a gravity which became the occasion; and Janet, who was the house-servant, and soft-hearted, stood at the table, washing cups and saucers, very slowly, and with the most elaborate care, lest one of them should tingle upon the other, and putting up her apron very often to wipe the tears from her eyes. Outside, on the broad stone before the kitchen door, a little ragged boy sat, crying bitterly—and no one else was to be seen about the house.
“Jenny,” said the elder maid, at last, “give that bairn a piece[5], and send him away. There’s enow of us to greet—for what we’re a’ to do for a puir distressed family, when aince the will o’ God’s accomplished this day, I canna tell.”
“Oh, woman, dinna speak! he’ll maybe win through,” cried Jenny, with renewed tears.
Marget was calm in her superior knowledge.
“I ken a death-bed from a sick-bed,” she said, with solemnity; “I’ve seen them baith—and weel I kent, a week come the morn, that it was little good looking for the doctor, or wearying aye for his physic time, or thinking the next draught or the next pill would do. Eh sirs! ane canna see when it’s ane’s ain trouble; if it had been ony ither man, the Mistress would have kent as weel as me.”
“It’s an awfu’ guid judge that’s never wrang,” said Jenny, with a little impatience. “He’s a guid faither, and a guid maister; it’s my hope he’ll cheat you a’ yet, baith the doctor and you.”
Marget shook her head, and went solemnly to a great wooden press, which almost filled one side of the kitchen, to get the “piece” which Jenny showed no intention of bestowing upon the child at the door. Pondering for a moment over the basket of oat cakes, Marget changed her mind, and selected a fine, thin, flour one, from a little pile.
“It’s next to funeral bread,” she said to herself, in vindication of her choice; “Tammie[4], my man, the maister would be nae better if ye could mak’ the water grit with tears—run away hame, like a good bairn; tell your mother neither the Mistress nor me will forget her, and ye can say, I’ll let her ken; and there’s a piece to help ye hame.”
“I dinna want ony pieces—I want to ken if he’s better,” said the boy; “my mother said I wasna to come back till there was good news.”
“Whisht, sirrah, he’ll hear you on his death-bed,” said Marget, “but it’ll no do you ony harm, bairn; the Mistress will aye mind your mother; take your piece and run away.”
The child’s only answer was to bury his face in his hands, and break into a new fit of crying. Marget came in again, discomfited; after a while she took out a little wooden cup of milk to him, and set it down upon the stone without a word. She was not sufficiently hard-hearted to frown upon the child’s grief.
“Eh, woman Jenny!” she cried, after an interval, “to think a man could have so little pith, and yet get in like this to folk’s hearts!”
“As if ye didna ken the haill tale,” cried Jenny, with indignant tears, “how the maister found the wean afield with his broken leg, and carried him hame—and how there’s ever been plenty, baith milk and meal, for thae puir orphants, and Tammie’s schooling, and aye a kind word to mend a’—and yet, forsooth, the bairn maunna greet when the maister’s at his latter end!”
“We’ll a’ have cause,” said Marget, abruptly; “three bonnie lads that might be knights and earls, every one, and no’ a thing but debt and dool, nor a trade to set their hand to. Haud yer peace!—do ye think there’s no trade but bakers and tailors, and the like o’ that? and there’s Huntley, and Patie, and Cosmo, my bonnie bairns!—there never was three Livingstones like them, nor three of ony other name as far as Tyne runs—and the very bairn at the door has muckle to look to as they!”
“But it’s nae concern o’ yours, or o’ mine. I’m sure the maister was aye very good to me,” said Jenny, retiring into tears, and a non sequitur.
“No, that’s true—it’s nae concern o’ yours—you’re no’ an auld servant like me,” said her companion, promptly, “but for mysel’ I’ve sung to them a’ in their cradles; I would work for them with my hands, and thankful; but I wouldna desire that of them to let the like o’ me work, or the Mistress toil, to keep them in idleset. Na, woman—I’m jealous for my bairns—I would break my heart if Huntley was content to be just like his father; if either the Mistress or the lads will listen to me, I’ll gie my word to send them a’ away.”
“Send them away—and their mother in mourning? Oh, my patience! what for?”
“To make their fortune,” said Marget, and she hung the great pot on the great iron hook above the fire, with a sort of heroic gesture, which might have been amusing under other circumstances—for Marget believed in making fortunes, and had the impulse of magnificent hope at her heart.
“Eh, woman! you’re hard-hearted,” said her softer companion, “to blame the Maister at his last, and plan to leave the Mistress her lane in the world! I would make them abide with her to comfort her, if it was me.”
Marget made no answer—she had comforted herself with the flush of fancy which pictured these three sons of the house, each completing his triumph—and she was the byrewoman and had to consider the cattle, and cherish as much as remained of pastoral wealth in this impoverished house. She went out with her dark printed gown carefully “kilted” over her red and blue striped petticoat, and a pail in her hand. She was a woman of forty, a farm servant used to out-of-door work and homely ways, and had neither youth nor sentiment to soften her manners or enlarge her mind. Yet her heart smote her when she thought of the father of the house, who lay dying while she made her criticism upon him, true though it was.
“Has he no’ been a good master to me? and would I spare tears if they could ease him?” she said to herself, as she rubbed them away from her eyes. “But folk can greet in the dark when there’s no work to do,” she added, peremptorily, and so went to her dairy and her thoughts. Tender-hearted Jenny cried in the kitchen, doing no good to any one; but up-stairs in the room of death, where the family waited, there were still no tears.
CHAPTER II.
Half a mile below Norlaw, “as Tyne runs,” stood the village of Kirkbride. Tyne was but one of the many undistinguished Tynes which water the south of Scotland and the north of England, a clear trout stream, rapid and brown, and lively, with linns and pools, and bits of woodland belonging to it, which the biggest brother of its name could not excel; and Kirkbride also was but one of a host of Kirkbrides, which preserved through the country, long after every stone of it had mouldered, the name of some little chapel raised to St. Bridget. This was an irregular hamlet, straggling over two mounds of rising ground, between which Tyne had been pleased to make a way for himself. The morsel of village street was on one bank of the water, a row of irregular houses, in the midst of which flourished two shops; while at the south end, as it was called, a little inn projected across the road, giving, with this corner, and the open space which it sheltered, an air of village coziness to the place which its size scarcely warranted. The other bank of the water was well covered with trees—drooping birches and alders, not too heavy in their foliage to hide the half dozen cottages which stood at different elevations on the ascending road, nor to vail at the summit the great jargonel pear-tree on the gable wall of the manse, which dwelt upon that height, looking down paternally and with authority upon the houses of the village. The church was further back, and partially hidden by trees, which, seeing this edifice was in the prevailing fashion of rural Scottish churches—a square barn with a little steeple stuck upon it—was all the better for the landscape. A spire never comes amiss at a little distance, when Nature has fair play and trees enough—and the hillock, with its foliage and its cottages, its cozy manse and spire among the trees, filled with thoughts of rural felicity the stray anglers who came now and then to fish in Tyne and consume the produce of their labor in the gable parlor of the Norlaw Arms.
The doctor had just passed through the village. On his way he had been assailed by more than one inquiry. The sympathy of the hamlet was strong, and its curiosity neighborly,—and more than one woman retired into her cottage, shaking her head over the news she received.
“Keep us a’! Norlaw! I mind him afore he could either walk or speak—and then I was in service, in the auld mistress’s time, at Me’mar,” said one of the village grandmothers, who stood upon the threshold of a very little house, where the village mangle was in operation. The old woman stood at the door, looking after the doctor, as he trotted off on his stout pony; she was speaking to herself, and not to the little audience behind, upon whom, however, she turned, as the wayfarer disappeared from her eyes, and laying down her bundle on the table, with a sigh, “Eh, Merran Hastie!” she exclaimed, “he’s been guid to you.”
The person thus addressed needed no further inducement to put her apron to her eyes. The room was very small, half occupied by the mangle, which a strong country girl was turning; and even in this summer day the apartment was not over bright, seeing that the last arrival stood in the doorway, and that the little window was half covered by a curtain of coarse green gauze. Two other village matrons had come with their “claes,” to talk over the danger of their neighbor and landlord, and to comfort the poor widow who had found an active benefactor in “Norlaw.” She was comforted, grateful and grieved though she was; and the gossips, though they looked grave, entered con amore into the subject; what the Mistress was likely to do, and how the family would be “left.”
“My man says they’ll a’ be roupit, baith stock and plenishing,” said the mason’s wife. “Me’mar himsel’ gave our John an insight into how it was. I judge he maun have lent Norlaw siller; for when he saw the dry-stane dike, where his ground marches with Norlaw, he gave ane of his humphs, and says he to John, ‘A guid kick would drive it down;’ says he, ‘it’ll last out his time, and for my part, I’m no a man for small fields;’ so grannie, there’s a family less, you may say already, in the country-side.”
“I’ll tarry till I see it,” said the old woman; “the ane of his family that’s likest Norlaw, is his youngest son; and if Me’mar himsel’, or the evil ane, his marrow, get clean the better of Huntley and Patrick, not to say the Mistress, it’ll be a marvel to me.”
“Norlaw was aye an unthrift,” said Mrs. Mickle, who kept the grocer’s shop in Kirkbride; “nobody could tell, when he was a young man, how he got through his siller. It aye burnt his pockets till he got it spent, and ye never could say what it was on.”
“Oh, whisht!” exclaimed the widow; “me, and the like of me, can tell well what it was on.”
“Haud a’ your tongues,” said the old woman; “if any body kens about Norlaw, it’s me; I was bairn’s-maid at Me’mar, in the time of the auld mistress, as a’ the town kens, and I’m well acquaint with a’ his pedigree, and mind him a’ his life, and the truth’s just this, whatever any body may say. He didna get his ain fancy when he was a young lad, and he’s never been the same man ever sinsyne.”
“Eh! was Norlaw crossed in love?” said the girl at the mangle, staying her grinding to listen; “but I’m no sorry for him; a man that wasna content with the Mistress doesna deserve a good wife.”
“Ay, lass; you’re coming to have your ain thoughts on such like matters, are ye?” said the old woman; “but take you my word, Susie, that a woman may be the fairest and the faithfu’est that ever stood on a hearthstane, but if she’s no her man’s fancy, she’s nae guid there.”
“Susie’s very right,” said the mason’s wife; “he wasna blate! for a better wife than the Mistress never put her hand into ony housewifeskep, and it’s her that’s to be pitied with a man like you; and our John says—”
“I kent about Norlaw before ever you were born, or John either,” said the old woman; “and what I say’s fac, and what you say’s fancy. Norlaw had never a thought in his head, from ten to five-and-twenty, but half of it was for auld Me’mar’s ae daughter. I’m no saying he’s a strong man of his nature, like them that clear their ain road, or make their ain fortune; but he might have held his ain better than he’s ever done, if he had been matched to his fancy when he was a young lad, and had a’ his life before him; that’s just what I’ve to say.”
“Weel, grannie, its awfu’ hard,” said the mason’s wife; “the Mistress was a bonnie woman in her day, and a spirit that would face onything; and to wear out her life for a man that wasna heeding about her, and be left in her prime a dowerless widow!—Ye may say what ye like—but I wouldna thole the like for the best man in the country-side, let alone Norlaw.”
“Naebody would, if they kent,” said the oracle, “but what’s a woman to do, if she’s married and bound, and bairns at her foot, before she ever finds out what’s been lying a’ the time in her man’s heart?”
“Then it was just a shame!” cried Susie, at the mangle, with tears in her eyes; “a burning shame! Eh Grannie, to find it out then! I would rather dee!”
“Ay, ay,” said the old woman, shaking her head; “young folk think so—but that’s life.”
“I’ll never think weel of Norlaw again—I’ll never believe a lad mair! they might be thinking ony mischief in their heart,” cried Susie, hastily putting up her particular bundle, and dashing a tear off her hot cheek. “They can greet for him that likes; I’ll think of naebody but the Mistress—no me!”
Whereupon this keen sympathizer, who had some thoughts of her own on the matter, rushed forth, disturbing the elder group, whose interest was calmer and more speculative.
“Aweel, aweel! we’re a’ frail and full of shortcomings,” said the widow; “but naebody kens how kind Norlaw has been to me. My little Tammie’s away somegate about the house now. I thought the bairn’s heart would break when he heard the news first. I’m sure there’s no one hour, night or day, that he wouldna lay down his life for Norlaw.”
“He was aye a kind man and weel likit—most folk are that spend their siller free, and take a’ thing easy,” said Mrs. Mickle, with a sigh which was partly for that weakness of human nature, and partly for the departing spirit.
Then new customers began to come in, and the group dispersed. By this time it was getting late in the afternoon, and John Mellerstone’s wife had to bethink herself of her husband’s supper, and Mrs. Mickle of her evening cup of tea. The sun had begun to slant over the face of the brae opposite to them, brightening the drooping bushes with touches of gold, and glowing upon the white gable wall of the manse, obscured with the wealthy branches of its jargonel tree. The minister was making his way thoughtfully up the path, with his hat over his face a little, and his hands under the square skirts of his coat, never pausing to look down, as was his custom when his mind was at ease. He, too, had been at Norlaw, and his thoughts were still there.
CHAPTER III.
The sun was shining into the west chamber at Norlaw. It was the room immediately over the dining-room, a large apartment, paneled and painted in a faint green color, with one window to the front and one to the side of the house. The side window looked immediately upon the old castle, and on the heavy masses of blunt-leaved ivy which hung in wild festoons everywhere from this front of the ruin; and the sun shone in gloriously to the sick chamber, with a strange mockery of the weakness and the sorrow there. This bed was what used to be called a “tent-bed,” with heavy curtains of dark brown moreen, closely drawn at the foot, but looped up about the pillows. At the side nearest the sunshine, the Mistress, whose place had been there for weeks, stood by the bed measuring out some medicine for the sufferer. A fortnight’s almost ceaseless watching had not sufficed to pale the cheek of health, or waste the vigor of this wife, who was so soon to be a widow. Her fresh, middle-aged, matronly bloom, her dress careful and seemly, her anxious and troubled brow, where deep solicitude and hope had scarcely given way to the dread certainty which everybody else acknowledged, made a very strange contrast, indeed, to the wasted, dying, eager face which lay among those pillows, with already that immovable yellow pallor on its features which never passes away; a long, thin hand, wasted to the bone, was on the coverlid, but the sufferer looked up, with his eager, large black eyes toward the medicine glass in his wife’s hand with a singular eagerness. He knew, at last, that he was dying, and even in the solemnity of those last moments, this weak, graceful mind, true to the instincts of its nature, thought with desire and anxiety of dying well.
The three sons of the house were in the room watching with their mother. Huntley, who could scarcely keep still, even in the awe of this shadow of death, stood by the front window, often drawing close to the bed, but unable to continue there. The second, who was his mother’s son, a healthful, ruddy, practical lad, kept on the opposite side of the bed, ready to help his mother in moving the patient. And at the foot, concealed by the curtains, a delicate boy of fifteen, with his face buried in his hands, sat upon an old square ottoman, observing nothing. This was Cosmo, the youngest and favorite, the only one of his children who really resembled Norlaw.
The caprice of change was strong upon the dying man; he wanted his position altered twenty times in half an hour. He had not any thing much to say, yet he was hard to please for the manner of saying it; and longed, half in a human and tender yearning for remembrance, and half with the weakness of his character, that his children should never forget these last words of his, nor the circumstances of his dying. He was a good man, but he carried the defects of his personality with him to the very door of heaven. When, at last, the pillows were arranged round him, so as to raise him on his bed in the attitude he wished, he called his children, in his trembling voice. Huntley came forward from the window, with a swelling heart, scarcely able to keep down the tears of his first grief. Patrick stood by the bed-side, holding down his head, with a stubborn composure—and Cosmo, stealing forward, threw himself on his knees and hid his sobbing in the coverlid. They were all on one side, and on the other stood the mother, the care on her brow blanching into conviction, and all her tremulous anxiety calmed with a determination not to disturb this last scene. It was the last. Hope could not stand before the look of death upon that face.
“My sons,” said Norlaw, “I am just dying; but I know where I am in this strait, trusting in my Saviour. You’ll remember I said this, when I’m gone.”
There was a pause. Cosmo sobbed aloud in the silence, clinging to the coverlid, and Huntley’s breast heaved high with a tumultuous motion—but there was not a word said to break the monologue of the father, who was going away.
“And now you’ll have no father to guide you further,” he continued, with a strange pity for them in his voice. “There’s your mother, at my side—as true a wife and as faithful, as ever a man had for a blessing. Boys, I leave your mother, for her jointure, the love you’ve had for me. Let her have it all—all—make amends to her. Martha, I’ve not been the man I might have been to you.”
These last words were spoken in a tone of sudden compunction, strangely unlike the almost formal dignity of the first part of his address, and he turned his eager, dying eyes to her, with a startled apprehension of this truth, foreign to all his previous thoughts. She could not have spoken, to save his life. She took his hand between hers, with a low groan, and held it, looking at him with a pitiful, appealing face. The self-accusation was like an injury to her, and he was persuaded to feel it so, and to return to the current of his thoughts.
“Let your mother be your counselor; she has ever been mine,[1q]” he said once more, with his sad, dying dignity. “I say nothing about your plans, because plans are ill adjuncts to a death-bed; but you’ll do your best, every one, and keep your name without blemish, and fear God and honor your mother. If I were to speak for a twelvemonth I could not find more to say.”
Again a pause; but this time, besides the sobs of Cosmo, Patrick’s tears were dropping, like heavy drops of rain, upon the side of the bed, and Huntley crushed the curtain in his hand to support himself, and only staid here quite against his nature by strong compulsion of his will. Whether he deserved it or not, this man’s fortune, all his life, had been to be loved.
“This night, Huntley will be Livingstone of Norlaw,” continued the father; “but the world is fading out of my sight, boys—only I mind, and you know, that things have gone ill with us for many a year—make just the best that can be made, and never give up this house and the old name of your fathers. Me’mar will try his worst against you; ay, I ought to say more; but I’m wearing faint—I’m not able; you’ll have to ask your mother. Martha, give me something to keep me up a moment more.”
She did so hurriedly, with a look of pain; but when he had taken a little wine, the sick man’s eye wandered.
“I had something more to say,” he repeated, faintly; “never mind—your mother will tell you every thing;—serve God, and be good to your mother, and mind that I die in faith. Bairns, when ye come to your latter end, take heed to set your foot fast upon the rock, that I may find you all again.”
They thought he had ended now his farewell to them. They laid him down tenderly, and, with awe and hidden tears, watched how the glow of sunset faded and the evening gray stole in over that pallid face which, for the moment, was all the world to their eyes. Sometimes, he said a faint word to his wife, who sat holding his hand. He was conscious, and calm, and departing. His sins had been like a child’s sins—capricious, wayward, fanciful transgressions. He had never harmed any one but himself and his own household—remorseful recollections did not trouble him—and, weak as he was, all his life long he had kept tender in his heart a child’s faith. He was dying like a Christian, though not even his faith and comfort, nor the great shadow of death which he was meeting, could sublime his last hours out of nature. God does not always make a Christian’s death-bed sublime. But he was fast going where there is no longer any weakness, and the calm of the evening rest was on the ending of his life.
Candles had been brought softly into the room; the moon rose, the night wore on, but they still waited. No one could withdraw from that watch, which it is agony to keep, and yet worse agony to be debarred from keeping, and when it was midnight, the pale face began to flush by intervals, and the fainting frame to grow restless and uneasy. Cosmo, poor boy, struck with the change, rose up to look at him, with a wild, sudden hope that he was getting better; but Cosmo shrunk appalled at the sudden cry which burst as strong as if perfect health had uttered it from the heaving, panting heart of his father.
“Huntley, Huntley, Huntley!” cried the dying man, but it was not his son he called. “Do I know her name? She’s but Mary of Melmar—evermore Mary to me—and the will is there—in the mid chamber. Aye!—where is she?—your mother will tell you all—it’s too late for me.”
The last words were irresolute and confused, dropping back into the faint whispers of death. When he began to speak, his wife had risen from her seat by the bed-side—her cheeks flushed, she held his hand tight, and over the face of her tenderness came an indescribable cloud of mortification, of love aggrieved and impatient, which could not be concealed. She did not speak, but stood watching him, holding his hand close in her own, even after he was silent—and not even when the head sank lower down among the pillows, and the eyes grew dim, and the last hour came, did the watcher resume the patient seat which she had kept so long. She stood by him with a mind disquieted, doing every thing that she could do—quick to see, and tender to minister; but the sacramental calm of the vigil was broken—and the widow still stood by the bed when the early summer light came in over her shoulder, to show how, with the night, this life was over, and every thing was changed. Then she fell down by the bed-side, scarcely able to move her strained limbs, and struck to the heart with the chill of her widowhood.
It was all over—all over—and the new day, in a blaze of terrible sunshine, and the new solitude of life, were to begin together. But her sons, as they were forced to withdraw from the room where one was dead, and one lost in the first blind agony of a survivor, did not know what last pang of a long bitterness that was, which struck its final sting, to aggravate all her grievous trouble, into their mother’s heart.
CHAPTER IV.
Those slow days of household gloom and darkness, when death lies in the house, and every thought and every sound still bears an involuntary reference to the solemn inmate, resting unconscious of them all, went slowly over the roof of Norlaw. Sunday came, doubly mournful; a day in which Scottish decorum demanded that no one should stir abroad, even to church, and which hung indescribably heavy in those curtained rooms, and through the unbroken stillness of its leisure, upon the three youths who had not even their mother’s melancholy society to help them through the day. The Mistress was in her own room, closely shut up with her Bible and her sorrow, taking that first Sabbath of her widowhood, a solitary day of privilege and indulgence, for her own grief. Not a sound was audible in the house; Jenny, who could be best spared, and who was somewhat afraid of the solemn quietness of Norlaw, had been sent away early this morning, to spend the Sabbath with her mother, in Kirkbride, and Marget sat alone in the kitchen, with a closed door and partially shuttered window, reading to herself half aloud from the big Bible in her lap. In the perfect stillness it was possible to hear the monotonous hum of her half-whispering voice, and sometimes the dull fall of the ashes on the kitchen hearth, but not a sound besides.
The blinds were all down in the dining-room, and the lower half of the shutters closed. Though the July sun made triumphant daylight even in spite of this, it was such a stifling, closed-in, melancholy light, bright upon the upper walls and the roof, but darkened and close around the lads, that the memory of it never quite passed out of their hearts. This room, too, was paneled and painted of that dull drab color, which middle-class dining-rooms even now delight in; there were no pictures on the walls, for the family of Norlaw were careless of ornaments, like most families of their country and rank. A dull small clock upon the black marble mantel-piece, and a great china jar on the well-polished, old-fashioned sideboard, were the only articles in which any thing beyond use was even aimed at. The chairs were of heavy mahogany and hair-cloth—a portion of the long dining-table, with a large leaf folded down, very near as black as ebony, and polished like a mirror, stood between the front windows—and the two round ends of this same dining-table stood in the centre of the room, large enough for family purposes, and covered with a red and blue table-cover. There was a heavy large chintz easy-chair at the fire-place, and a little table supporting a covered work-basket in the corner window—yet the room had not been used to look a dull room, heavy and dismal though it was to-day.
The youngest boy sat by the table, leaning over a large family Bible, full of quaint old pictures. Cosmo saw the pictures without seeing them—he was leaning both his elbows on the table, supporting his head with a pair of long, fair hands, which his boy’s jacket, which he had outgrown, left bare to the wrists. His first agony of grief had fallen into a dull aching; his eyes were observant of the faintest lines of those familiar wood-cuts, yet he could not have told what was the subject of one of them, though he knew them all by heart. He was fair-haired, pale, and delicate, with sensitive features, and dark eyes, like his father’s, which had a strange effect in contrast with the extreme lightness of his hair and complexion. He was the tender boy—the mother’s child of the household, and it was Cosmo of whom the village gossips spoke, when they took comfort in the thought that only his youngest son was like Norlaw.
Next to Cosmo, sitting idly on a chair, watching how a stream of confined sunshine came in overhead, at the side of the blind, was Huntley, the eldest son. He was very dark, very ruddy, with close curls of black hair, and eyes of happy hazel-brown. Heretofore, Huntley Livingstone’s principal characteristic had been a total incapacity to keep still. For many a year Marget had lamented over him, that he would not “behave himself,” and even the Mistress had spoken her mind only too often on the same subject. Huntley would not join, with gravity and decorum, even the circle of evening visitors who gathered on unfrequent occasions round the fireside of Norlaw. He had perpetually something on hand to keep him in motion, and if nothing better was to be had, would rummage through lumber-room and family treasury, hunting up dusty old sets of newspapers and magazines, risking the safety of precious old hereditary parchments, finding a hundred forgotten trifles, which he had nothing to do with. So that it was rare, even on winter evenings, to find Huntley at rest in the family circle; it was his wont to appear in it at intervals bringing something with him which had no right to be there—to be ordered off peremptorily by his mother with the intruding article; to be heard, all the evening through, knocking in nails, and putting up shelves for Marget, or making some one of the countless alterations, which had always to be made in his own bed-chamber and private sanctuary; and finally, to reappear for the family worship, during which he kept as still as his nature would permit, and the family supper, at which Huntley’s feats, in cutting down great loaves of bread, and demolishing oat-cakes, were a standing joke in the household. This was the old Huntley, when all was well in Norlaw. Now he sat still, watching that narrow blade of sunshine, burning in compressed and close by the side of the blind; it was like his own nature, in those early days of household grief.
Patrick was a less remarkable boy than either of his brothers; he was most like Huntley, and had the same eyes, and the same crisp, short curls of black hair. But Patrick had a medium in him; he did what was needful, with the quickest practical sense; he was strong in his perception of right and justice; so strong, that the Quixotry of boyish enthusiasm had never moved him; he was not, in short, a describable person; at this present moment, he was steadily occupied with a volume of sermons; they were extremely heavy metal, but Patrick went on with them, holding fast his mind by that anchor of heaviness. It was not that his gravity was remarkable, or his spiritual appreciation great; but something was needful to keep the spirit afloat in that atmosphere of death; the boys had been “too well brought up” to think of profaning the Sabbath with light literature; and amusing themselves while their father lay dead was a sin quite as heinous. So Patrick Livingstone read, with a knitted brow, sermons of the old Johnsonian period, and Cosmo pondered the quaint Bible woodcuts, and Huntley watched the sunshine; and they had not spoken a word to each other for at least an hour.
Huntley was the first to break the silence.
“I wish to-morrow were come and gone,” he exclaimed, suddenly, rising up and taking a rapid turn through the room; “a week of this would kill me.”
Cosmo looked up, with an almost feminine reproof in his tearful black eyes.
“Well, laddie,” said the elder brother; “dinna look at me with these e’en! If it would have lengthened out his days an hour, or saved him a pang, would I have spared years to do it? but what is he heeding for all this gloom and silence now?”
“Nothing,” said the second brother, “but the neighbors care, and so does my mother; it’s nothing, but it’s all we can give—and he would have heeded and been pleased, had he thought beforehand on what we should be doing now.”
It was so true, that Huntley sat down again overpowered. Yes, he would have been pleased to think of every particular of the “respect” which belonged to the dead. The closed houses, the darkened rooms, the funeral train; that tender human spirit would have clung to every one of them in his thoughts, keeping the warmth of human sympathy close to him to the latest possibility, little, little though he knew about them now.
“What troubles me is standing still,” said Huntley, with a sigh. “I can not tell what’s before us; I don’t think even my mother knows; I believe it’s worse than we can think of; and we’ve neither friends, nor money, nor influence. Here are we three Livingstones, and I’m not twenty, and we’ve debts in money to meet, and mortgages on the land, and nothing in the world but our hands and our heads, and what strength and wit God has given us. I’m not grumbling—but to think upon it all, and to think now that—that he’s gone, and we’re alone and for ourselves—and to sit still neither doing nor planning, it’s that that troubles me!”
“Huntley, it’s Sabbath day!” said Cosmo.
“Ay, I ken! it’s Sabbath and rest, but not to us,” cried the young man; “here’s me, that should have seen my way—I’m old enough—me that should have known where I was going, and how I was going, and been able to spare a hand for you; and I’m the biggest burden of all; a man without a trade to turn his hand to, a man without knowledge in his head or skill in his fingers—and to sit still and never say a word, and see them creeping down, day by day, and every thing put back as if life could be put back and wait. True, Patie! what would you have me do?”
“Make up your mind, and wait till it’s time to tell it,” said Patie, without either reproof or sympathy; but Cosmo was more moved—he came to his eldest brother with a soft step.
“Huntley,” said Cosmo, in the soft speech of their childhood, “what makes ye speak about a trade, you that are Livingstone of Norlaw? It’s for us to gang and seek our fortunes; you’re the chief of your name, and the lands are yours—they canna ruin you, Huntley. I see the difference mysel’, the folks see it in the country-side; and as for Patie and me, we’ll seek our fortunes—we’re only the youngest sons, it’s our inheritance; but Norlaw, and home, and the name, are with you.”
This appeal had the strangest effect upon Huntley; it seemed to dissipate in an instant all the impatience and excitement of the youth’s grief; he put his arm round Cosmo, with a sudden melting of heart and countenance.
“Do ye hear him, Patie?” cried Huntley, with tears; “he thinks home’s home forever, because the race has been here a thousand years; he thinks I’m a prince delivering my kingdom! Cosmo, the land’s gone; I know there’s not an acre ours after to-morrow. I’ve found it out, bit by bit, though nobody said a word; but we’ll save the house, and the old castle, if we should never have a penny over, for mother and you.”
The boy stared aghast into his brother’s face. The land! it had been Cosmo’s dream by night, and thought by day. The poetic child had made, indeed, a heroic kingdom and inheritance out of that little patrimonial farm. Notwithstanding, he turned to Patie for confirmation, but found no comfort there.
“As you think best, Huntley,” said the second son, “but what is a name? My mother will care little for Norlaw when we are gone, and the name of a landed family has kept us poor. I’ve found things out as well as you. I thought it would be best to part with all.”
“It was almost his last word,” said Huntley, sadly.
“Ay, but he could not tell,” said the stout-hearted boy; “he was of another mind from you or me; he did not think that our strength and our lives were for better use than to be wasted on a word. What’s Norlaw Castle to us, more than a castle in a book? Ay, Cosmo, it’s true. Would you drag a burden of debt at Huntley’s feet for the sake of an acre of corn-land, or four old walls? We’ve been kept down and kept in prison, us and our forbears, because of Norlaw. I say we should go free.”
“And I,” cried Cosmo, lifting his long, white hand in sudden passion, “I, if Huntley does not care for the name, nor for my father’s last wish, nor for the house of our ancestors; I will never rest night nor day, though I break my heart or lose my life, till I redeem Norlaw!”
Huntley, whose arm still rested on the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer, with a look which had caught a tender, sympathetic, half-compassionate enthusiasm from his.
