The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story. Маргарет Олифант
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If ye find her, ye’re nane the better, if ye dinna find her, ye’re aye deluded with the thought of a fortune ye canna claim—and if ye get word she’s dead, there’s still Melmar himself, that was bred a writer and kens a’ the cheats of them, to fight the battle! They might say it was a false will—they might say, Guid forgive them! that Norlaw had beguiled the auld man. There’s evil in’t but nae guid; Huntley, you’re your father’s son, you’re to make his amends to her. Dinna vex the Mistress’s life with Mary of Melmar ony mair!”
“The short and the long of it all, Marget,” said Patrick, who was at once more talkative and more peremptory than usual—“is, that you must mind your own business and we’ll mind ours. Huntley’s not a knight in a story-book, seeking a distressed lady. Huntley’s not in love with Mary of Melmar; but if she’s to be found she shall be found; and if she’s dead my brother’s the heir.”
“No’ till you’re done wi’ a’ her bairns,” cried Marget; “say there’s nae mair than three of them, like yoursels—and the present Me’mar’s been firm in his seat this thirteen years. Weel, weel, I daur to say Patie’s right—it’s nae business o’ mine; but I’d sooner see you a’ working for your bread, if it was just like laboring men, and I warn ye baith, the day’s coming when ye’ll think upon what I say!”
Marget disappeared, solemnly shaking her head as she said these last words. For the moment, the two youths said nothing to each other. The desk was locked softly, the will placed in an old pocket-book, to be deposited elsewhere, and then, for the first time, the young men’s eyes met.
“She’s right,” said Patie, with sudden emphasis; “if you seek her yourself, Huntley, you’ll neither get Me’mar nor fortune—it’s true.”
Huntley paid little attention to his brother. He stood looking out from the window, where, in the distance, to the north, the banks of Tyne rose high among the woods of Melmar—opposite to him, fertile fields, rich in the glow of coming harvest, lay the wealthy lands of his father’s enemy—those lands which perhaps now, if he but knew it, were indisputably his own. He stood fascinated, looking out, tracing with an unconscious eagerness the line of the horizon, the low hills, and trees, and ripening corn, which, as far as he could see before him, were still part of the same inheritance. He was not a dreamy boy like Cosmo—he thought little of his father’s old love, or of the triumph of restoring her to her inheritance. The Mary of Norlaw’s fancy was but a shadow upon the future of his own. He thought, with a glow of personal ambition, of the fair stretch of country lying before him. Generous, high-spirited, and incapable of meanness, Huntley still had the impulse of conquest strong within him. He could not but think, with a rising heart, of this visible fortune which lay at his feet and seemed to be almost within his grasp. He could not but think, with indignant satisfaction, of unseating the false heir whose enmity had pursued Norlaw to the very grave. All the excitement which had gathered into these few past weeks still throbbed in Huntley’s heart and stirred his brain. He could not moderate the pace of his thoughts or subdue his mind at anybody’s bidding. If it should be hard to get justice and a hearing for his claims, this very difficulty increased the attraction—for it was his claims he thought of while the others were thinking of Mary of Melmar. He was not selfish, but he was young, and had an ardent mind and a strong individual character. Mary of Melmar—a white ghost, unreal and invisible—faded from his mind entirely. He thought, instead, of the man who had arrested Norlaw’s funeral, and of the inheritance of which he was the rightful heir.
With all these fumes in his brain it was quite impossible that Huntley could listen soberly to the sober counsels of Patie, or to the warnings of the old servant. They begged him not to think of a search for Mary. He thought of nothing of the kind. Mary had taken no position of romance in the young man’s fancy. The romance which blossomed in his eyes was a much less disinterested one than that which Cosmo mused upon in the old window of the castle. He thought of himself, of his own family, of all the possibilities and powers of an extensive land-owner, and with the flush of youthful self-belief, of a great life. He had stood thus at the window a long time gazing out, and paying no attention to the occasional words of his sensible brother, when the sound of some one coming roused them both. It was the Mistress’s firm footsteps ascending the stair—they both left the room immediately, agreed, at least, in one thing, to trouble their mother no more with recollections disagreeable to her. Then Patie went about his business, somewhat disturbed by the thought that Huntley meant to throw away a portion of his life in the same fruitless folly which had injured their father; while Huntley himself, remembering something that had to be done at Kirkbride, set off along the banks of Tyne at a great pace, which did not, however, overtake the swing of his thoughts. Marget, coming out to her kitchen door to look after him, held up her hands and exclaimed to herself, “The laddie’s carried!” as she watched his rapid progress—which meaning, as it did, that Huntley was fairly lifted off his feet and possessed by a rapid and impetuous fancy, was perfectly correct—though the fancy itself was not such as Marget thought.
CHAPTER XVI
The village lay bright under the afternoon sun when Huntley Livingstone came in sight of it that day. It was perfectly quiet, as was its wont—some small children playing at the open doors, the elder ones, save here and there an elder daughter charged with the heavy responsibility of a baby, being for the most part safe at school. At the door of the Norlaw Arms an angler-visitor, with his rod over his shoulder, a single figure becalmed in the sunshine, stood lazily gazing about him—and in the shadow of the projecting gable of the inn, another stranger stood holding his horse before the door of the smithy, from whence big John Black, the smith, was about to issue to replace a lost shoe. John was the master of this important rural establishment, and was a big, soft-hearted giant, full of the good-humored obtuseness which so often accompanies great personal size and strength. Inside, in the fiery obscurity of the village Pandemonium, toiled a giant of quite a different order—a swarthy, thick-set little Cyclops, with a hump on his shoulder, and one eye. This was John’s brother, the ruling spirit of mischief in Kirkbride, whom all the mothers of sons held in disgust and terror, and whom Dr. Logan himself could make no improvement in. Jacob, or Jaacob, as he was popularly called, was as strong as he was ugly, and, it was generally understood, as wicked as both. By natural consequence, his rustic neighbors found a considerable attraction in his society, and liked to repeat his sayings, which were not always funny, with explosions of laughter. Huntley’s errand, as it happened, was with this individual, who was somewhat of a genius in his way, which was the way of agricultural implements. Jaacob had even taken out what he called a “paatent” for a new harrow of his own invention, and was, in right of this, the authority, on all such matters, of the country-side.
“Ye’ll be carrying on the farm then?” said Jaacob. “A plow needs mair than a new coulter to drive it through a furrow—it’ll be new work to you, Mr. Huntley, to gang atween the stilts yoursel’.”
Huntley had descended suddenly out of the hurry of his fancies about Melmar, of which he already saw himself master. He came to the ground with rather a rude shock when he heard these words, and found himself on the hard earthen floor of the smithy, with the red sparks flying into the darkness over his head, and Jaacob’s one eye twinkling at him in the fiery light. He was not the laird of Melmar to Jaacob, but only the son of the ruined Norlaw.
“What we want in the meantime is the plow,” said Huntley, somewhat sharply, his face flushing in spite of himself; then he added, after a pause, all the humiliation of debt and poverty recurring to his mind, which had been defended for some time against that lesser pain by the excitement of grief, and to-day by the violent flush of ambitious hope. “I believe there is a bill—but if you’ll send it up to the house I’ll see to it without delay.”
Bowed Jaacob was not ungenerous in his way, but he scorned to defend himself from any imputation of ungenerosity. He did not hasten, therefore, as might have been supposed, to say that the aforesaid bill was of no importance, and could wait. On the contrary, he proceeded, with sarcastic dryness in his tone:
“You’ll find it hard work to get in your craps. How many acres have ye in wheat the year, Mr. Huntley? You’ll no’ ken? Houts, man! that’s an ill beginning for a lad that farms his ain land.”
In spite