The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story. Маргарет Олифант
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delicate young lady loved a piece of news fully as well as her sister. Joanna, therefore, stood still, making hasty and awkward apologies, and eager to do something to amend her mistake, while her delicate companion recovered breath. There was something more than nerves in the young lady’s discomposure. She was feeble by nature, the invalid of the family, which Joanna, knowing no sympathetic ailment in her own vigorous person, sometimes had the ill luck to forget.
“And my poor book!” said poor Patricia, picking up the unfortunate volume, which lay fluttering with open leaves on the very edge of that tiny current trickling over the brown path, which, save that it moved and caught an occasional sparkle of light, you could not have distinguished to be a burn. “Oh, Joanna, you are so thoughtless! what was all this haste about?”
“Oh, such a story!” cried Joanna, eagerly. “It’s easy to speak about nerves—but when I heard it I could have run to papa and given him a good shake—I could! and he deserved it! for they say it was all his blame.”
“I should like to hear what it was,” said Patricia, with an exasperating and intolerable meekness, which usually quite overpowered the patience of her sister.
But Joanna was too much interested in the present instance.
“It was Mr. Livingstone of Norlaw,” she said, sinking her voice; “he’s dead, and his funeral was stopped because he was in debt, and it was papa that did it—and the three boys got up at midnight and carried him on their shoulders, with torches in their hands, to Dryburgh, and buried him there. Sinclair says it’s true, every word; and I don’t know whether Huntley did not swim over Tweed to get the boat. Oh, Patricia! I feel as if I could both greet and cry hurra, if I were to see them; and as for papa, he deserves—I don’t know what he does not deserve!”
“I wish you would talk like a lady, Joanna,” said her sister, without taking any notice of this unfilial sentiment; “greet! you could just as well say cry, or weep, for that matter—and it’s only common people that say Tweed, as if they meant a person instead of a river; why don’t you say the Tweed, as people of education say?”
“He’s the truest person I know,” cried Joanna. “Tweed and Tyne! you may say that they’re just streams of water, if you like, but they’re more to me; but the question is papa—I knew he was ill enough and hard-hearted, but I never, never thought he could have been so bad as that—and I mean to go this very moment and ask him how it was.”
“I suppose papa knows better than we do,” said Patricia, with a slight sigh; “but I wish he would not do things that make people talk. It is very annoying. I dare say everybody will know about this soon, if it’s true. If it was all himself it would not so much matter, and you never go out anywhere, Joanna, so you don’t feel it—but is very unpleasant to mamma and me.”
“I was not thinking of either mamma or you; I was thinking of the Livingstones,” cried Joanna, with a flush of shame on her cheeks; “and I mean to go in this very instant, and ask him what it means.”
So saying, the impetuous girl rushed up the path, slowly followed by Patricia. It was one of the loveliest bits of woodland on the whole course of Tyne. Mosses and wild flowers, and the daintiest ferns known to Scotland, peeped out of every hollow—and overhead and around, stretching down half way across the river, and thrusting out, with Nature’s rare faculty of composition, their most graceful curves of foliage against the sky, were trees, not too great or ancient to overshadow the younger growth; trees of all descriptions, birches and beeches and willows, the white-limbed ash, with its green bunches of fruit, and the tender lime, with its honey blossoms. You could have almost counted every separate flash of sunshine which burned through the leaves, misty with motes and dazzling bright with that limitation; and yet the shadow overhead trembled and fluctuated with such a constant interchange, that the spot which was in shade one moment was in the brightest light the very next. The light gleamed in Joanna’s red hair, as she plunged along in her impetuous way towards the house, and fell in touches here and there upon the graceful little figure of her sister, in her close cottage bonnet and muslin gown, as Patricia came softly over the same road, book in hand. But we are bound to confess that neither of the two, perfectly accustomed and familiar as they were, found a moment’s leisure among their other thoughts to pause upon this scene; they went towards the house, the one after the other—Patricia with a due regard to decorum as well as to her nerves and feebleness of frame—Joanna totally without regard for either the one or the other; and both occupied, to the entire neglect of every thing else, with thoughts of their own.
The house of Melmar was placed upon a level platform of land, of a considerably lower altitude than this brae. Pausing to look at it, as neither Joanna nor Patricia did, on the rustic bridge which crossed the Tyne, and led from this woodland path into the smooth lawn and properly arranged trees of “the private grounds,” Melmar appeared only a large square house, pretentious, yet homely, built entirely for living in, and not for looking at. If Nature, with her trees, and grass, and bits of garden land, softening the angles and filling in the gaps, had done her best to make it seemly, the house was completely innocent of aiding in any such attempt. Yet, by sheer dint of persistence, having stood there for at least a hundred years, long enough to have patches of lichen here and there upon its walls, Melmar had gained that look of steadiness and security, and of belonging to the soil, which harmonizes even an ugly feature in a landscape. The door, which was sheltered by a little portico, with four tall pillars, in reality stone, but looking considerably like plaster, opened from without after the innocent fashion of the country. Running across the lawn, Joanna opened the door and plunged in, without further ado, into her father’s study, which was at the end of a long passage looking out upon the other side of the house. He was not there—so the girl came rushing back again to the drawing-room, the door of which stood open, and once more encountering her sister there, did her best to disturb the delicate nerves a second time, and throw Patricia out of breath.
This papa, whom Joanna had no hesitation about bearding in his own den, could not surely be such an ogre after all. He was not an ogre. You could not have supposed, to look at him, that any exaltation of enmity, any heroic sentiment of revenge, could lodge within the breast of Mr. Huntley, of Melmar. He was a tall man, with a high, narrow head, and reddish grizzled hair. A man with plenty of forehead, making up in height for its want of breadth. He was rather jovial than otherwise in his manner, and carried about with him a little atmosphere of his own, a whiff of two distinct odors, not unusual attendants of elderly Scotsmen, twenty years ago, reminiscences of toddy and rappee. He looked around with a smile at the vehement entrance of Joanna. He permitted all kinds of rudenesses on the part of this girl, and took a certain pleasure in them. He was not in the slightest degree an exacting or punctilious father; but not all his indulgence, nor the practical jokes, banter, and teasing, which he administered to all children, his own, among the rest, when they were young enough—had secured him either fondness or respect at their hands. They got on very well on the whole. Patricia pouted at him, and Joanna took him to task roundly when they differed in opinion—but the affection they gave him was an affection of habit, and nothing more.
“I’ve come to speak to you, papa,” cried Joanna. “I’ve just been hearing the whole story, every word—and oh, I think shame of you!—it’s a disgrace, it’s a sin—I wonder you dare look any of us in the face again!”
“Eh? what’s all this?” said Melmar; “Joan in one of her tantrums already? Three times in a day! that’s scarcely canny—I’ll have to speak to your aunt Jean.”
“Oh, papa!” cried Joanna, indignantly, “it’s no fun—who do you think would carry you to Dryburgh if somebody stopped your funeral? not one! You would have to stay here in your coffin and never be buried—and I wouldna be sorry! You would deserve it, and nothing better—oh, I think shame on you!”
“What? in my coffin? that’s a long look beforehand,” said Melmar. “You may have time to think shame of me often enough before that time, Joan; but let’s hear what’s all this about Dryburgh and a funeral—who’s been here?”
“Sinclair was here,” cried Joanna, “and he heard it all at Kirkbride—every word—and he says you had better not be seen there, after all you’ve done at Norlaw.”
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