Merkland: or, Self Sacrifice

There was a pause. His breath came painfully. The hectic on his cheek flushed deeper. Christian made a gesture with her hand to Anne, dismissing her. He saw it.

“Stay,” he said, “stay – my work is not yet done. Christian, hear me; when I have said this, I will take my journey in peace. My eyes are clear now. I dare look back to that terrible time. I did it unawares. The blood on my hand was not wilfully shed; ye hear me, ye trust me, Christian! I had that deadly weapon in my hand; my mind was far away as it often was. I was thinking of the two, and of their bright lot; my eye caught something dark among the trees. I thought it was a bird. Christian, it was the head of Arthur Aytoun, the man that I was hating in my heart! I came home; my soul was blinded within me. I was as innocent of wish to harm him as was the water at my feet; but yet in my inmost heart long before, I had been angry with my brother! My soul was blind; now I see, for the Lord has visited me with His mercy. You know all now. I have sinned; but I did this unawares, and into His city of refuge, my Lord has received my soul.”

The shadows were gathering – darker, closer – the face becoming deadly white. His breath came with less painful effort, but the end was at hand. He made a sign which Christian knew. She lifted a Bible, and began to read. Anne stood behind in silent awe, as the low voice rose through that dim room, whose occupant stood upon the eternal brink so near an unseen world. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation.” Wondrous words! spanning all this chaos of human sin and feebleness with their heavenward bridge of strong security.

Christian read on calmly, solemnly while the slow life ebbed wave by wave. She had reached the end.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For – ”

She was stayed by the outstretching of that worn and wasted hand. A strange shrill voice, unnaturally clear, took up the words:

“I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Christian sprang forward to support him. He needed no support. In the might of that one certain thing, of which he was at last persuaded, the spirit of Patrick Lillie had ascended into his Saviour’s heaven.

A pale, feeble, worn-out garment, over which no longer the fluctuating fever of a wavering mind should sweep and burn – a fair, cold face, whose gentle features could answer no longer to the thousand changes of that delicate and tremulous soul, Christian laid back upon the pillow – no longer restless, or ill at ease, or fearful, but sleeping peaceful sleep – tranquil and calm at last!

And she stood by his bedside who had borne, through all these dreadful years, the strong tenacious life of deadly agony for him. As pale as his, was the thin, worn face bending over him; for a moment she listened with that intensest pain of watching, which seems to make the listener blind, and concentrates all the senses in that one – listening for the faint fall of his breath. It was in vain: those pale lips, until the great day of resurrection, should draw breath again – never more.

“I thank God,” said Christian Lillie, in the solemn calm of that death-chamber; “I thank God, Patrick, my brother, that you are safe, and at rest. Safe after perils greater than time could wear out. At rest after the hourly warfare and deadly travail of a lifetime – I thank God. My Father! – my Father! I thank Thee, who rejectest no petition, that Thou hast heard my cry!”

Her hands were clasped. Anne feared they were becoming rigid in the attitude of supplication so common to them. She laid her hand upon Christian’s arm.

“Ay, I will not linger,” said Christian, “but look at him – look at him at peace, and blessed at last. Do you see my tears? I have not shed one since yon June morning, but now I can weep. I will not linger; but can you not feel the blessedness of seeing his salvation – his rest in the fair haven – his solemn peace at last? I thank God, Patrick – I thank God!”

“You are worn out,” said Anne, gently; “come now and take rest – leave the further cares of this sad time to me.”

The tears were falling from her eyes like large soft rain-drops; there was a quivering, woeful smile about her lip.

“Ay, ay, I will go; I have one work yet for his sake, and theirs. At peace in the pure heaven of our Lord and Saviour – at rest. In hope and certainty that nothing can shake again, look how he has begun his tranquil waiting for the second coming. He is with his Lord, and I – yes, I will go and rest. Here I take up again the human hope that has been dead within me for eighteen lingering years; it died by him, and by him it is alive again. I will go and take rest for my labor. I trust him to your hands; I have never trusted him before in the care of any mortal. Now, I must rest for Norman’s sake, and you will watch for Patrick’s; I trust him to you.”

And so, at last Anne was able to lead her to her own chamber. The tension of mind and frame had been so long and stern, that now, when it was relaxed, Anne trembled for the issue; but Christian had borne all the vicissitudes of mental agony too long to sink now when there still remained labor to do “for his sake, and theirs.” She suffered Anne’s attendance with a strange child-like gentleness, as of one whose own long task is over; and while she lay down upon her bed, continued to speak of that blessed rest and peacefulness with a tremulous quivering smile, and wandering of thought which brought the tears fast from Anne’s eyes. – Deeply pitiful and moving was this pathetic garment of her grief.

At last, sleep was mercifully sent, such sleep as God gives to His beloved – calm, serene, and child-like – the sad smile trembling upon her lip – the mild tears stealing from under her closed eyelids, and her soul the while carried back to times of past tranquillity – the peace and gentle joyousness of the old cottage home.

From Christian’s bedside, Anne proceeded to a sadder work; a work too painful and repugnant for anything but callous habit, or deep tenderness. She called up the old serving-woman, and together they rendered the last offices to the dead.

The solemn, calm, majestic, awful dead, in whose still presence, were he in life the meanest, the princeliest soul of earth must stoop and bow. Strange doom which, with its sad mysterious ending, can make the meanest lifetime a sublime, unequalled thing! Strange death which, in its ghostly silence, can thrust so lightly the vain speculations of man aside, and make our mortal flesh shrink and tremble from the thrilling power of unseen life, that moves behind the curtain of its gloom. What man shall stand in its presence, and dare to say that this is the end? What man shall look upon its majesty, and tell us that is the mere death at which he thrills and shivers? It is not so – mightier, more terrible and great – it is the supernatural glow of an unseen life beyond that thus appals us.

The moonbeams glided over the Firth in spiritual stillness. – The necessary offices were done, and Anne and Marget sat down in a small adjoining room to watch. The old woman began to nod in her chair; this was to her but an ordinary death, and death to those who are accustomed to assist at its dread ceremonials, loses its awe and solemnity. Anne opened the window as the sun rose, and bathed her pale face in the delicious air of the morning. Under her sadness and awe a solemn joy was trembling. – Her work was accomplished – now for the exile’s home-coming – for household rest and companionship – for communion with the near and dear kindred over whom her heart had yearned so long.

The country was beginning to awake: the early morning labor of those rural people had commenced. She could see smoke rising from the indistinct dim towns on the Fife coast. – She awoke her companion, and then went softly into Christian’s room.

But Christian was gone; her Bible lay open upon the table, where she had sought its comfort when she rose. Her plain black silk cloak and bonnet had been taken away. Anne began to be alarmed; where could she be?

In the chamber of death she was not. Anne fancied she could perceive some trace of her having entered the room, but they had watched in the adjoining apartment, and Anne knew that she had been wakeful. She hurried down stairs and searched the rooms below: Christian was not to be found.

Looking through the low window of the study, she saw Jacky standing at the gate, and hastened to admit her. The girl was shivering with intense anxiety, and alarm – she had been standing there for more than an hour. On the previous night, she had haunted the precincts of Schole in fear and trembling for her mistress, and had been abruptly dismissed by Marget, with a fretful explanation that “Maister Patrick was in the deadthraw” – since then she had been watching at the window of Miss Crankie’s parlor. Now, she was awe-stricken, speaking below her breath, and letting fall now and then silent, solitary, large tears. She had never been in the shadow of death before, and her imaginative spirit bowed before its majesty.

“Jacky,” said Anne, “he is dead.”

Jacky did not answer – she only glanced a timid, wistful, upward look out of those keen, dark eyes of hers, dilated and softened with her sympathy.

“You will come in and stay with me, Jacky,” said Anne. “I must remain here for some days – you are not afraid?”

Afraid! no. Jacky was stricken with awe and sad reverence, but not with fear.

“I do not well know what to do, Jacky,” said Anne, thoughtfully. “Miss Lillie seems to have wandered out: I cannot find her.”

“If ye please, Miss Anne, I saw her.”

“Where, Jacky?”

“I was standing at the window looking out – it was just at the sun-rising – and I saw the gate of Schole opened canny, and Miss Lillie came out. She was just as she aye is, only there was a big veil over her face, and she took the Aberford road; and she didna walk slow as she does at common times, but was travelling ower the sands as fast as a spirit – as if it was a great errand she was on; naebody could have walkit yon way that hadna something urging them, and I thought then that Mr. Patrick was dead.”

Anne did not observe Jacky’s reflections and inferences – she was too much occupied in speculations as to Christian’s errand.

“If ye please, Miss Anne, would ye no go up to your ain room and lie down? I’ll stay and keep a’thing quiet.”

“I must see Miss Crankie,” said Anne. “The air will revive me, Jacky, and I could not rest. In the meantime, you must stay at Schole, and see that no one disturbs the stillness that belongs to this solemn vicinity. We should have reverenced him living – we must reverence him more sadly dead.”

Jacky was overcome – her eyes were flooded – she needed to make no promise. Anne’s charge to her was given in consequence of some grumbling threat of Marget’s to “get in some o’ the neighbors – no to be our lane wi’ the corp.” Anne was determined that there should be no unseemly visits, or vulgar investigation of the remains of one who had shrunk from all contact with the world so jealously.

“If ye please, Miss Anne – ”

Anne had put on her bonnet, and stood at the gate on her way out.

“What is it, Jacky?”

Jacky hung her head in shy awkwardness.

“It was just naething, Miss Anne.”

Anne comprehended what the “just naething” was, and, understanding the singular interest and delicate sympathy of this elfin attendant of hers, knew also how perfectly she was to be trusted.

“Jacky,” she said, “what I tell you, you will never tell again, I know: this gentleman who died last night was nearly connected with us – if Marget asks you any questions, you can tell her that; and my work is accomplished here – accomplished in sorrow and in hope. By-and-by my brother of whom you have heard, will come home I trust, in peace and honor, to his own house and lands. – The work we came here for is done.”

Jacky was tremulously proud, but she had yet another question.

“And if ye please, Miss Anne – little Miss Lilie?”

A radiant light came into Anne’s eye. It was the first time she had dared to speak of the near relationships with which she now hoped to be surrounded.

“Lilie is my niece – my brother’s child – I believe and hope so, Jacky.”

Jacky’s first impulse was to turn her back on Schole, and flee without a moment’s delay to Oranside. She recollected herself, however; she only sat down on the mossy garden-path, and indulged in a fit of joyous crying – pride, and exultation, and affection, all contributing their part. “For I kent,” said Jacky to herself, tremulously, when Anne was gone, “I aye kent she was like somebody – a’ but the e’en – and it would be her mother’s e’en!”

But Jacky recollected her charge – recollected the solemn tenant who lay within those walls, and became graver. Marget was sitting in the kitchen when she entered, refreshing herself with a cup of tea. Their salutations were laconic enough.

“Is that you, lass?” said Marget.

“Yes, it’s me,” said Jacky. “Miss Anne said I was to come in and stay; and she’ll be back soon hersel.”

“And wha’s Miss Anne that’s taking sae muckle fash wi’ this puir afflicted family?” said Marget. “Are ye ony friend to us, lassie? or what gars your mistress and you come into our house, this gate?”

“Miss Anne says Miss Lillie is a friend. I think it’s maybe by ither friends being married, but I dinna ken – only that they’re connected – Miss Anne said that.”

“And what do they ca’ ye?” continued Marget.

“They ca’ me Jacobina Morison – I was christened that after my uncle – but I aye get Jacky at hame; and they ca’ Miss Anne, Miss Ross, of Merkland.”

“She’ll be frae the north country,” said Marget. “I never heard o’ ony Norland freends Miss Kirstin had. Onyway it maun be for love ony fremd person taks heed o’ us – for it canna be for siller. They’re a strange family. Ye see the breath was scarce out o’ Maister Patrick, puir lamb – he was liker a bairn, than a man of years at ony time – when Miss Kirstin she gaed away. I saw your leddy seeking her – whaur she’s gane, guid kens.”

“Did she ever do that before?” asked Jacky.

“Eh, bless me, no: she was aye ower feared about him, puir man, wha has won out o’ a’ trouble this night. Maybe ye wad like to see him? He’s a bonnie – ”

Jacky interrupted her hurriedly. In that imaginative, solemn awe of hers, she could not endure the ghastly admiration which one hears so often expressed by persons of Marget’s class for the dead, about whom they have been employed.

“Ye’ll be wearied?” said Jacky, hastily.

“Ay, lass, I’m wearied: it’s no like I could be onything else wi’ a’ that I have to do – and that sair hoast, and the constant fecht I hae wi’ my breath – it’s little the like o’ you ken – forbye being my lane in the house. If ye’ll just bide and look to the door, I’ll gang an get some o’ the neighbor wives to come in beside me: there’s nae saying when Miss Kirstin may be hame.”

“Miss Anne’s coming hersel,” said Jacky, eagerly. “And if ye would lie down and get some rest, I’ll do the work – and I’m no feared to be my lane – and if ye had a guid sleep, ye would be the better o’t.”

“I’ll no’ say but what I would,” said Marget, graciously; “and ye’re a considerate lass to think o’t. Tak a cup o’ tea – it’s no right to gang out in the morning fasting – and I daresay I’ll just tak your counsel. It doesna do for an auld body like me to be out o’ my bed a’ night.”

So Jacky got Marget disposed of, and remained with much awe, and some shadow of superstitious fear, alone within the house of Schole – supported by the sunshine round about her as she lingered at the door – for Marget, in decent reverence, had drawn a simple curtain across the window. The other rooms were shuttered and dark – the natural homage of seemly awe and gravity in the presence of death.

Anne had no difficulty in inducing Miss Crankie to take upon her those matters of sad external business, which she herself was not qualified to manage. With more delicacy than she expected, Miss Crankie undertook them immediately. Mrs. Yammer was “in sore distress with rheumatics in my back, and my head like to split in twa wi’ the ticdoloureux – and it’s a’ yon awfu’ nicht – and I dinna believes Miss Ross, I’ll ever get the better o’t. – Johann and you, that are strong folk, fleeing out into the storm, and me, a puir weak creature, left, to fend my lane – forbye being like to gang out o’ my judgment wi’ fricht, for you and the perishing creatures in the ship. Eh! wha would have thought of a weak man like yon saving them – and so he’s ta’en to his rest! Weel I’m sure, Miss Ross, you’ve been uncommon kind to them – they canna say but they’ve found a friend in need.”

“They are my relatives,” said Anne: “I mean we are nearly connected.”

Miss Crankie opened her little dark eyes wide. Mrs. Yammer began, with an astonished exclamation, to recollect the pedigree of the Lillies, and acquaint herself with this strange relationship. – Her sister stopped her abruptly.

“Take your breakfast, Tammie, and dinna haver nonsense. Is Kirstin content, Miss Ross, to have ye biding in her house?”

“Quite content,” said Anne.

Miss Crankie’s eyes opened wider. She began with a rapid logic, by no means formal, but which had a knack of arriving at just conclusions, to put things together. She had a glimmering of the truth already.

“Miss Lillie is out,” said Anne. “I fear, in her deep grief, she wandered out, finding herself unable to rest; but neither she nor I are able for these details. You will greatly oblige me, Miss Crankie, and do your old friend a most kind service, if you will undertake this.”

Miss Crankie promised heartily, and Anne returned to Schole. Again there passed a long, weary, brilliant summer day, but Christian did not return. The night fell, but the roof that covered the mortal garment of Patrick Lille, sheltered no kindred blood. Anne had taken Christian’s place – she was the watcher now.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ANOTHER day, as bright, as weary, and as long, and still there were no tidings of Christian. Anne became alarmed. She sent out Jacky to make inquiries; Jacky ascertained that Miss Lillie on the previous morning had gone by the earliest coach to Edinburgh. The intelligence was some relief, yet perplexed Anne painfully; the arrangements were going on, but what could she do, if Christian remained absent, thus left alone with the dead?

In the middle of the day, Miss Crankie brought her a letter from Mrs. Catherine. Anne’s conscience smote her; during Patrick’s illness, she had scarcely written to Mrs. Catherine at all; and her brief notes had only intimated his illness, and her hope of obtaining some further information through the Lillies. Mrs. Catherine’s letter had an enclosure.

“My Gowan,

“What has come over you? I have been marvelling these past mornings whether it was success or failure – a light heart or a downcast one, that made you forgetful of folk to whom all your doings are matters of interest, and have been since you could use your own proper tongue to testify of them. Think you this lad Lillie has any further knowledge than you have yourself? I count it unlikely, or else he is a pithless laggard, not worthy to call Norman Rutherford friend, and Norman was not one to choose his friends lightly, or be joined in near amity with a shallow head and a faint heart. So I would have you build little on the hope of getting good tidings from him, seeing that if he had known anything, he must have put it to its fitting use before now. You say it gave him a fever? I like not folk, child, who are thrown into fevers by sore trouble and anguish, and make themselves a burden and a cumbrance, when they ought to be quickened to keener life – the more helpful and strong, the greater the extremity; it augurs a narrow vessel and a frail spirit in most cases – it may be other in his. Certain he bore himself like a man in the night you tell me of. Let me see his sister, if you can bring her; there, seems – if ye draw like the life – to be no soil in her for the cowardice of sickness to flourish on, from which I take my certainty, that if she had kent any good word concerning this dark mystery, she must have put it to the proof before now.

“To speak about other matters, I send you a letter – worthy the light-headed, undutiful fuil from whose vain hand it comes. You will see she will have none of my counsel, and puts my offer of an honorable roof over her, and a home dependent on no caprice or strange woman’s pleasure, in the light of a good meaning – will to do kindness without power. If it were not for Archie’s sake, and for the good-fame of their broken house, she should never more say light word to me. He has been but a month dead, this miserable man of hers – that she left her mother’s sick-bed for – and look at her words! without so much as a decent shadow on them, to tell where the sore gloom of death had fallen so late. I am growing testy in my spirit, child; though truly sorrow would set me better than anger, to look upon the like of a born fuil like this – her brother ruined, and her man killed. Archie, a laboring wayfarer, with his good name tarnished, and his father’s inheritance, lost; the husband for whose sake she brought down her mother’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, taken away suddenly from this world by the red grip of a violent death, and the wanton fuil what can I call her else? – as if she had not gotten enough to sober her for a while, returning in haste to her vanities – feared to leave the atmosphere of them – singing songs over the man’s new grave, and giving long nights to strangers, when she can but spare a brief minute to say a kind word to her one brother – a kind word, said I! I should say a bitter one, of folly and selfishness, – not comfort to him in his labor, but records of her own sinful vanities.

“You will say I am bitter, child, at this fuil – so I am – the more that I cannot be done with her, as I could with any other of her kind. She is still the bairn of Isabel Balfour – in good or in evil I am trysted to keep my eye upon her. I have been asking about the household she is in. The mistress of it, her friend, is at least of pure name; a scheming woman as I hear from one of their own vain kind – who has a pride in yoking the fuils about her in the unstable bands of marriage. Isabel has her mother’s fair face; they will be wedding her again for some passing fancy, or for dirt of siller. I scarce know which is the worst. I will have no hand in it, however it happens. Since she will be left to herself, she must. If deadly peril ever comes, I must put forth the strong hand.

“You will come to me with all speed when you can win. If you have any glimpse of good tidings, or if you have none – I am meaning when you come to any certainty – let me know without delay, that I may make ready for our home-going. To say the truth, I am weary at my heart of this place, and sickened with anger at the fuil whose letter I send you. Let me look upon you soon, lest the wrath settle down, and I be not able to shake it off again; which evil consequent, if you prevent it not, will be the worse for you all.

CATHERINE DOUGLAS.”

Mrs. Duncombe’s letter was enclosed.

“My dear Mrs. Catherine,

“It is so good of you to think of troubling yourself with me at the Tower, and must have put you so much out of the way, coming to Edinburgh, that I hasten to thank you. Poor dear Duncombe was taken away very suddenly; you would be quite shocked to hear of it. I was distracted. They had been quarrelling over their wine. Poor Duncombe was always so very jealous; and it was all for the merest word of admiration, which he might have heard from a thousand people beside. So they fought, and he was wounded mortally. You may think how dreadful it was, when they brought him home to me dying. I went into hysterics directly, I believe I needed the doctor’s care more than he did: before he died I was just able to speak to him, and he was so very penitent for having been sometimes rude to me, and so sorry for his foolish jealousy. Poor dear Edward! – I shall never forget him.

“I am staying here with a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Legeretie. She has got a delightful house, quite out of town, and they have come here just for my sake, to be quiet and away from the gay world, which of course I could not bear just now. We have quite a nice circle of friends, besides our visitors from London, and just with quiet parties, and country amusements, get on delightfully. Dear Eliza is so kind, and gives up her engagements in town, without a murmur, just to let me have the soothing quietness of the country, which the doctors order me – with cheerful society – for if it were not for that, my poor heart would break, I am sure – I have suffered so dreadfully.