Читать книгу The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story - Маргарет Олифант - Страница 17

Dr. Logan was in his study writing his sermon—Katie was alone in the manse parlor. It was a cheerful room, looking over the little front garden and down the brae to the roofs of the village from its front window, and peeping out through a flush of foliage upon Tyne and the Melmar woods from the other. The furniture was very simple, the carpet old, the walls painted of an ash-green, which was just one degree better than the drab-colored complexion of the Norlaw dining-room; but notwithstanding, the room was perfect and could not have been improved upon. There was only one easy-chair, and that was sacred to the minister; the others were of the ancient fashion of drawing-room chairs, once elaborately painted and gilded, but now much dimmed of their pristine splendor. Katie’s own hands had made all the pretty chintz covers, which fitted without a wrinkle, and the result was extremely satisfactory—very much more agreeable to look upon than the crumpled covers of the Melmar drawing-room. There was a wonderful screen of needle work, in a very slim ebony frame in one corner, an old-fashioned work table, with a crimson bag and inlaid top, which could answer as a chess-board, in another—and a low bookcase, full of books, between the door and the end window. On the table, at this present moment, stood a basket, of goodly dimensions, full of stockings—and by the side of that a little pile of freshly-mangled linen, pinafores and other small garments in want of strings and buttons. It was Friday, very near the end of the week—so the minister, too wise to leave his preparations to the latest day, made ready for his weekly duty in the study, while Katie did her weekly mendings on the same principle in her own domain.

“You may go to the study if you please Huntley—my father will be glad to see you,” said the young mistress of the manse, once more drawing Johnnie’s sock over her hand after she had welcomed her visitor. Huntley did not avail himself of the privilege so soon as he might have done, considering that he had come with the intention of asking advice from the minister. It was pleasant to sit down in that quiet, bright, home-like room, which looked as though nothing could disturb its cheerful composure, and see that careful little woman among her family labors, so fresh, and bright, and young, yet so perfectly in her place among these pleasant cares. Huntley, whose mind was in a tumult of unaccustomed anxieties, and who felt himself oppressed with a burden of responsibility, and the new necessity of deciding for himself, sank into a chair opposite Katie, with a sensation of rest and relief which he had not felt for weeks before. She looked up to him brightly with those smiling brown eyes which were so young and yet so full of elder-sisterly thoughtfulness. She saw in a moment the shadow on Huntley’s face, and proceeded to minister to it as if it had been a cloud upon the boyish horizon of one of her own young brothers. Katie could not help being half maternal even to Huntley.

“Something ails you,” said the little woman—“are you tired, Huntley? Oh, I mind when grief was here, what hard, hard work it was keeping up a smile. Never mind me; look sorrowful, if you like, and take a rest. It makes me think how I felt myself when dear mamma died, to see you keeping up a face like that.”

“Oh, Katie, I wish we had you at Norlaw!” cried the lad, with sudden earnestness.

“Yes,” said Katie, simply, “if you had only had a sister, Huntley!—but Mrs. Livingstone does not care for strangers. And mothers are sometimes fondest of their sons—everybody says so; but I know you’re the eldest, and every thing comes on you.”

“Patie is the wisest,” said Huntley, with a momentary smile; “I think he could manage better without me—and, Katie, I’ll have to go away.”

She looked up at him with a question in her eyes. She asked nothing audibly, but merely suspended her work, and turned, with a friendly anxiety, her steady, kind gaze upon Huntley’s face. The young man was not “in love"—he was still too familiar with this sisterly face, and too much occupied with all the sudden troubles in which he had himself been plunged, to think of any such thing; but, unconsciously, Huntley paused before answering—paused to take the peaceful scene, the home apartment, the bright serious eyes into his memory, a picture of strange influence and tenderness never to fade.

“I thought of going to Australia,” he said; “they say a man with a will to work and some knowledge, especially of cattle, is sure to thrive there. It matters but little, I think, Katie, whether I’m a hundred or a thousand miles away, so long as I am away; and I think the best place for me is there.”

“But Australia is many a thousand miles away,” said Katie, “at the other end of the world; and you can not come home to see your friends as you might do from a nearer place. If you go there, Huntley, we’ll never see you again.”

“I’ll go there, that I may come back,” said Huntley, eagerly; then he began to play with the ball of cotton which Katie was mending her children’s stockings with; then he looked round the room wistfully once more. “And when I do come home,” said the lad, “Katie, I wonder, I wonder, what changes I’ll see here?”

“Oh, whisht!” cried Katie, with a little overflow of tears; “papa’s not young, but he’s no’ very old; and if it’s God’s will, we’ll aye be the same.”

“It might be ten—fifteen years,” said Huntley; “and I was not thinking of the minister; I was thinking of—other things.”

Katie did not ask what these other things might be. The color rose in her cheek a little, but not enough to confuse her.

“The little ones will be all grown up,” she said, with a quiet laugh; “perhaps some of them away too, Huntley, into the battle; and me an old Katie with a cap, keeping house for papa.”

She glanced across the table for her cotton as she spoke, and, meeting Huntley’s eye, blushed a little more, yet was not discomposed. The young man’s heart beat louder, he could not very well tell why. Some confused words came rushing into his mind, but none of them were fit to say. His own face flushed with a hasty flood of unaccustomed and unascertained emotions; he rose up hastily, scarcely knowing how it was that the repose of the manse parlor was broken, yet feeling it. Dr. Logan called Katie from his study, and Huntley answered the call. He gave back the ball of cotton, and said hurriedly:—

“Dinna forget me, Katie, when that time comes;” and so went away.

That time! what time? Huntley could have given no explanation of what he meant; neither could Katie, who put up her hand softly to her eyes, and smiled a very faint smile, and said, “Poor boy!” with a little sigh as the door closed upon him. But perhaps explanations would have done but little good, and every thing answered perfectly well as it was.

Huntley came with a blush into the presence of the innocent and unconscious minister, who had forgotten his own youth many a long day ago, and had never yet been roused into consciousness that his little Katie might be something else than a good child and elder sister, in the perverse imaginations of other people. He looked up from his desk and his manuscript, and pushed up his spectacles on his forehead when the young man entered.

“Huntley! is that you? What’s wrong, my man?” said Dr. Logan. He thought the lad could not have seen Katie, or he must have become more composed by this time; and the excellent pastor thought of nothing else than some new accident or coil at Norlaw.

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Huntley, who only blushed the more in shamefaced self-consciousness, “but I wanted to ask your advice.”

Dr. Logan laid down his pen with resignation; it was a new pen, sharply nibbed, such as the minister loved, and he had just got a capital idea for the third head of his sermon, an idea which might be nowhere before Huntley had half stated his case. The minister paused a moment, trying very hard to connect his idea with something in the room which might recall it to him when his visitor was gone. He tried the inkstand, the pretty paper-weight on the table, and even his large red and green pocket-handkerchief, in vain. At last he thought he had secured it on the knob of the glass door of his bookcase; he nodded ruefully to Huntley and made a knot on his handkerchief.

“Now, Huntley, proceed, my boy,” said the minister with a sigh; he held the knot on the handkerchief in his hand, and fixed his eyes on the bookcase. Certainly he had it safe now.

Huntley, glad to get out of his embarrassment so, plunged at once into his tale. He could not quite make out how it was that the excellent doctor looked so steadily at the bookcase, and gave himself such divided and wandering answers. However, at last the minister forgot his idea, and threw away the handkerchief in despair.

“Eh? what was that you were saying, Huntley?” said Dr. Logan. The story had to be gone over again. But, to Huntley’s surprise, his friend knew all about it, more about it indeed than he did himself, and shook his head when Huntley vehemently declared his conviction that he was the true heir of Melmar.

“I make no doubt,” said the minister, “that if she could be found, the will would stand—but I mind the writer laying it down very clear to me and Norlaw at the time that ye behoved to produce her alive or dead—that is, by evidence in the last case, no doubt—before your case could stand. It might be well worth a man’s while that had enough to keep him, and nothing else to do—but I would not advise you to put off your time seeking Mary Huntley. You’re the eldest son and the prop of your family. I would not advise it, Huntley, my man.”

“Nor do I mean it,” said Huntley, with a blush at his own wild fancies; “and if I had known that you knew it so well, I should not even have troubled you. No, doctor, I’ve written to your friend in Edinburgh—I want him to take all our affairs in hand, and save, if it is possible, Norlaw itself for my mother. What we’ll have to begin upon after, I can’t very well tell—but Cosmo is the only one of us too young to set out for himself. I will leave the other matter with Mr. Cassilis, and he can do what he thinks best.”

“Very wise, Huntley, very wise,” said the minister, whose mind was still fumbling after his idea; “and you’re thinking of going abroad yourself, they tell me?—I don’t doubt it’s a shock to your mother, but I would say it was the best thing you could do. Charlie Cassilis, no doubt, will be coming here. He’s aye very willing to come to the manse. I’ll make Katie write him a line to-day, to say we’ll expect him—and any thing I can do to further the business, you know you can rely upon—eh? what was that you said?”

“Nothing,” said Huntley, “except that there’s little time to lose, and I am interrupting you. Good-bye, Dr. Logan—I’ll see you again before I go away.”

“Before he goes away,” said the minister, with perplexity, half rising to follow Huntley, as he hurried from the room; “what does the callant mean?” But just then Dr. Logan’s eye returned to the knob of the bookcase, which no longer recalled that precious lost idea. “Poor human nature!” said the good man, with a sigh. He thought it rather selfish of Huntley to have disturbed his studies just at that particular moment—and it was the young man’s human nature over which he sighed.

Huntley, meanwhile, went back again to Norlaw in a greater tumult of mind than that which had brought him forth. But he no longer thought of Melmar as he had done in that sudden golden vision of fortune and conquest. His heart leaped within him like one on the verge of a new world. These three scenes through which he had passed:—bowed Jaacob’s odd philosophy and startling groundwork—“Trust in nothing that you have not conquered for yourself;” Katie’s quiet home-parlor, her blush and glance of kindness, which perhaps understood his unspoken and sudden fervor as well as he did himself; and, beyond these, the sober, calm every-day minister, giving only an outside and momentary attention to those matters in which this young life had all its hopes at stake, minding his sermon, and only kindly indifferent to Huntley, had brought the youth on a long way in the education of his life. He could not have put it all into words, or explained it to the satisfaction of the philosopher; yet the shock of reality and actual life which brought him back to himself in the little smithy of Kirkbride—the warm light of Katie’s eyes which had stirred, with something of personal and distinct identity, separate from family interests, and individual in the world, the young man’s heart and spirit—and not least, though very different, the composed friendliness of the minister, pre-occupied with his sermon, who had only a very spare amount of attention to bestow upon Huntley, and showed him that the world in general was not likely to be much absorbed by his interests, or startled by his hopes—were all very real, practical and permanent lessons. They sent him back to Norlaw an older man.