"Never drew breath, you say, nurse!" resumed Mr. White, with an air of astonishment; "why, I have been given to understand, not only that the child was born alive, but that it is actually living now."
"Weel," replied the nurse, "maybe St. Cuthbert has wrought a miracle, and brought the child out o" the grave by the West Church; but he has wrought nae miracle on me, to mak" me forget what my een saw, and my hands did, that day when I helped to place the dead body o" the innocent on the breast o" its dead mother; ay, and bent her stiff arms sae as to bring them ower her bairn, just as if she had been faulding it to her bosom. And sae in this fashion were they buried."
"And you would swear to that, Mrs. Temple?" said the writer.
"Ay, upon fifty Bibles, ane after anither," was the reply, in something like a tone of triumph.
Nor could the woman be induced to swerve from these a.s.sertions, notwithstanding repeated interrogations; and the writer was left to the conclusion--which he preferred, rather than place any confidence in the funeral letter--that the nurse"s statement was in some mysterious way connected with the visit of Isabel Napier; and yet, not so very mysterious, after all, when we are to consider that her brother was preparing to claim Eastleys, as well as the valuable furniture of the house in Meggat"s Land, as the nearest lawful heir of his deceased uncle. The salvo was at least comfortable to both Mr. White and his client, and no doubt it helped to lighten their steps, as, bidding adieu to the "hard witness," they left her to the nursing which comes "aye hame in the end."
But their inquiries were not finished; and retracing their steps up the Canongate, they landed in the Fountain Close, where, under the leading of Mrs. Hislop, the writer was procured another witness, with a name already familiar to him through the communication of his client; and this was no other than that same Jean Graham, who was sent to Toddrick"s Wynd on that eventful night, fifteen years before, to bring Mrs. Hislop to the house in Meggat"s Land;--one of those simple souls--we wish there were more of them in the world--who look upon a lie as rather an operose affair, and who seem to be truthful from sheer laziness. There was, accordingly, no difficulty here; for the woman rolled off her story just as if it had been coiled up in her mind for all that length of time.
"There was a terrible stir in the house that night," she began. "The nurse, wha is yet living in Lochend Close, and Mrs. Kemp the howdie, wha is dead, were wi" my lady; and John Cowie, the butler, was busy attending our master, who had been the haill day in ane o" his dark fits, for we heard him calling for Cowie in a fierce voice ever and again; and his step sounded ower our heads upon the floor as he walked back and fore in his wrath. Then I was sent for you, and brought you, and you"ll mind how Cowie bade me go along; but I had mair sense, for I listened at the door, and heard what the butler said to ye when he gied ye the bairn; and think ye I didna see ye carry it along the pa.s.sage as ye left? Sae far I could understand; but when I heard nurse say the bairn was dead, Mrs. Kemp say the bairn was still-born, and Cowie declare it was better it was dead and awa, I couldna comprehend this ava; nor do I weel yet; but we just thought that as there was something wrang between master and my lady, he wanted us to believe that the bairn was dead, for very shame o" being thought the father, when maybe he wasna. And then he was so guid to me and my neighbour Anne d.i.c.kson,--ye mind o" her--puir soul, she"s dead too,--that we couldna, for the very heart o" us, say a word o" what we knew. But now when Mr. Napier is dead, and the brother o" that wicked Jezebel, Isbel Napier, may try to take the property frae Henney, wha I aye kenned as a Napier, with the very nose and een o" the father, I have spoken out; and may the Lord gie the right to whom the right is due!"
"It"s all right," said the writer, after he had jotted with a pencil the evidence of Jean, as well as that of the nurse; "and if we could find this John Cowie, we might so fortify the orphan"s rights, as to defy Miss Napier and her brother, and Mr. Dallas, and all the witnesses they can bring."
"Ay," continued the woman, "but I doubt if you"ll catch him. He left Mr.
Napier"s service about ten years ago, and I never heard mair o" him."
"Nor I either," said Mrs. Hislop.
"Well, we must search for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so far as I can see, is he who will unravel this strange business."
And thus the day"s work finished. The writer parted for Mill"s Court, and Mrs. Hislop, filled with doubts, hopes, and anxieties, sought her humble dwelling in Toddrick"s Wynd, where Henney waited for her with all the solicitude of a daughter; but a word did not escape her lips that might carry to the girl"s mind a suspicion that the golden cord of their supposed relationship ran a risk of being severed, even with the eventual condition that one, if not both of the divisions, would be trans.m.u.ted into a string of diamonds.
Meanwhile the agent was in his own house, revolving all the points of a puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair; and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants, that the opposite party was undergoing the same process of oscillation.
It was clear enough that Cowie was the required Oedipus; and if it should turn out that he was dead, or could not be found, the advantage was, with a slight declination, on the part of Charles Napier; insomuch as, while he was indisputably the nephew of the deceased, the orphan, Henrietta, was under the necessity of proving her birth and pedigree.
And so, as it appeared, Mr. Dallas was of that opinion, for the very next day he applied to Chancery for a brieve to get Charles Napier served nearest and lawful heir to his uncle; and as in legal warfare, where the judges are cognisant only of patent claims, there is small room for retiring tactics, Mr. White felt himself obliged, however anxious he was to gain time, to follow his opponent"s example by taking out a competing brieve in favour of Henrietta.
The parties were now face to face in court, and the battle behoved to be fought out; but as in all legal cases, where the circ.u.mstances are strange or peculiar, the story soon gets wind, so here the Meggat"s Land romance was by-and-by all over the city. Nor did it take less fantastic forms than usual, where sympathies and antipathies are strong in proportion to the paucity of the facts on which they are fed. It was a favourite opinion of some, that the case could only be cleared by supposing that a dead stranger child had been surrept.i.tiously pa.s.sed off, and even coffined, as the true one; while others, equally skilled in the art of divining, maintained that the child given to Mrs. Hislop by Cowie was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of his own, by the terrible woman Isabel Napier, who was thus, according to the ordinary working of public prejudice, raised to a height of crime sufficient to justify the hatred of the people: on which presumption, it behoved to be a.s.sumed that the paper containing the curse was a forgery by Cowie and his a.s.sociate in crime, and that the money paid to Mrs. Hislop was furnished by the lady; all which suppositions, and others not less incredible, were greedily accepted, for the very reason that it required something prodigious to explain an enigma which exhausted the ordinary sources of man"s ingenuity; just as we find in many religions, where miracles--the more absurd, the more acceptable--are resorted to to explain the mystery of man"s relation to G.o.d, a secret which no natural light can illuminate.
But all these suppositions were destined to undergo refractions through the medium of a new fact. The case, by technical processes, came before the Court of Session, where the diversity of opinion was, proportionably to the number of judges, as great as among the quidnuncs outside. The only clear idea in the heads of the robed and wigged wiseacres was, that the case, Napier _versus_ Napier, was a puzzle which no man could read or solve. It seemed fated to be as famous as the old Sphinx, the insoluble Moenander, or the tortuous labyrinth, or the intricate key of Hercules--_ne Apollo quidem intelligat_; and if it had not happened that Lord Kames suggested the possibility of getting an additional piece of evidence through the examination of the coffin wherein Mrs. Napier was buried, the court might have been sitting over the famous case even in this year of the nineteenth century. The notion was worthy of his lordship"s ingenuity; and accordingly a commission was issued to one of the Faculty to proceed to the West Church burying-ground, and there cause to be laid open and examined the coffin of the said Mrs. Henrietta Preston or Napier, with the view to ascertain whether or not the body of a child had been placed therein along with the corpse of the mother.
This commission was accordingly executed, and the report bore, that "he, the commissioner, had proceeded to the burying-ground of the parish of St. Cuthberts, and there caused David Scott, the s.e.xton, to lay open the grave of the said Henrietta Preston or Napier, and to open the coffin therein contained; which having accordingly been done by the said David Scott and his a.s.sistants, the commissioner, upon a faithful examination, aided by the experience of the said David Scott, did find the skeletons of two bodies in the said coffin identified as that of the said lady, one whereof was that of a woman apparently of middle age, and the other that of a babe, which lay upon the chest of the larger skeleton in such a way or manner as to be retained or held in that position by the arms of the same being laid across it; that having satisfied himself of these facts, the commissioner caused the coffin to be again closed and the grave covered with all decency and care. And he accordingly made this report to their lordships."
The fact thus ascertained, in opposition to the expectation of those who favoured the orphan, was viewed by the court as depriving, to a great extent, the case of that aspect of a riddle by which it had been so unfortunately distinguished; and as the case had been hung up even beyond the time generally occupied by cases at that period, when, as it was sometimes remarked, law-suits were as often settled by the old rule, _Roma.n.u.s sedendo vincit_--by the death of one or other of the parties--as by a judgment, the case was again put to the Roll for a hearing on the effect of the new evidence. It was contended for the nephew by Mr. Wight, that the question was now virtually settled, insomuch that the court was not bound to solve riddles, but to find to whom pertained a certain right of inheritance. The birth of the child had been sworn to by the nurse, as well as its death, and the final placing of it in the coffin; and now the court had, as it were, ocular demonstration of these facts by the body having been seen by their own commissioner, placed on the breast of the mother in that very peculiar way described by Mrs. Temple. All claim on the part of the girl was thus virtually excluded, for the proceedings which took place that evening in another room, under circ.u.mstances of suspicion, were sworn to only by Mrs. Hislop herself, an interested witness, and were only partially confirmed by an eavesdropper, who, as eavesdroppers generally do (except when their own characters are concerned), perhaps heard according as foregone prejudices induced her to wish. These suspicious proceedings might be explained by as many hypotheses as had been devised by the wise judges of the taverns, among which was the theory of the living child being Cowie"s own by Isabel Napier, and palmed off as Mrs. Napier"s to hide the shame of the true mother,--all unlikely enough, no doubt, but not so impossible as that the coffined child should now be alive and awaiting the issue of this case, in the expectation of being Lady of Eastleys.
On the other side, Mr. Andrews, counsel for Henrietta, maintained that while his learned brother a.s.sumed the one half of the case as proved, and repudiated the other as a lie or a myth, he had a right to embrace the other half, and p.r.o.nounce the first a stratagem or trick. The proceedings in the back-room into which Jean Graham introduced Mrs.
Hislop were more completely substantiated than those in the bedroom where Mrs. Napier lay; for while the one were sworn to by Mrs. Hislop herself, a soothfast witness, and confirmed in all points by the woman Graham, the other were attempted to be proven by the solitary testimony of the nurse Temple. The paper containing the curse was as indisputably in the handwriting of Mr. Napier as was the funeral letter. The money paid was proved by the fact that the orphan had been kept and educated for fifteen years. The name Henrietta was not likely to have been a mere coincidence, and it was still more unlikely that a respectable woman such as Mrs. Hislop would invent a story of affiliation so strangely in harmony with the secrets of the house in Meggat"s Land, and fortify it by a forged doc.u.ment. Then Mrs. Hislop was unable to write, and no attempt had been made on the other side to prove that Henrietta had a father other than he who was pointed out by the paper of the curse. So he (the counsel) might follow the example of his brother, and hold the other half of the case to be unexplainable by hypotheses, however ridiculous. The child having been disposed of to Mrs. Hislop,--a fact thus proved,--what was to prevent him (the counsel) from going also to the haunts of the _tabernian_ Solons, or anywhere else in the regions of fancy, for the theory that Mr. Napier, or some plotter for him in the shape of Mrs. Kemp or John Cowie, subst.i.tuted the dead child of a stranger for the living one of his wife, and bribed the nurse Temple to tell the tale she had told? to which she would be the more ready by the golden promptings of the woman Isabel Napier, the niece, whose brother would, in the event of the stratagem being concealed, succeed to the estate of Eastleys.
At the conclusion of these pleadings, the judges were inclined to be even more humorous than they had been previous to the issuing of the commission, for they had thought they saw their way to a judgment against the orphan. The president (Braxfield), it is said, indulged in a joke, to the effect that he had read _somewhere_--it was not for so religious a man to say where--of a child having been claimed by two mothers; he would like to see two fathers at that work, at least he would not be one; but here the claim was set up by Death on the one side, and Life (if a personification could be allowed) on the other, and they could not follow the old precedent, because he suspected none of their lordships would like to see the grim claimant at the bar to receive his half. And so they chuckled, as judges sometimes do, at their own jokes--generally very bad--altogether oblivious of the fable of the frogs who could see no fun in a game which was death to them; for, as we have indicated, the opinion of a great majority was against the claim of the young woman: nor would the decision have been suspended that day, had not Mr. Andrews risen and made a statement--perhaps _as_ fict.i.tious as a counsel"s conscience would permit--to the effect that the agent (Mr. White) had procured some trace of the butler Cowie, who could throw more light on the case than Death had done, and that if some time were accorded to complete the inquiry, something might turn up which would alter the complexion even of this Protean mystery. The request was granted.
But, in truth, Mr. Andrews" suggestion was simply a bit of ingenuity, intended to ward off an unfavourable judgment, and allow a development of the chapter of accidents;--a wise policy; for as the womb of Time is never empty, so Fate writes in the morning a chapter of every man"s life of a day, at which in the evening he is sometimes a little surprised. No trace had yet been got of Cowie; it was not even known whether he was alive. But if we throw some fourteen days into the wallet-bag of Saturn, we may come to a day whereupon a certain person, in an inn far down in a valley of Westmoreland, and in the little town called Kirby Lonsdale, was busy reading the _Caledonian Mercury_--for it was not more easy to say where the winged _Mercury_ of that time would not go, than it is to tell where a certain insect without wings, "which aye travels south,"
might not be found in England as an immigrant. It was at least no wonder that the paper should contain an account of the romance wrapped up in the case Napier _versus_ Napier; and certainty, if we could have judged from the face of the individual, we would have set him down as one given to the reading of riddles; for, after he had perused the paragraph, he looked as if he knew more about that case than all the fifteen, with the macers to boot. Nor was he contented with an indication of a mere look of wisdom: he actually burst out into a laugh--an expression wondrously unsuited to the gravity of the subject. You who read this will no doubt suspect that we are merely shading this man for the sake of effect: and this is true; but you are to remember that, while we are chroniclers of things mysterious, we work for the advantage to you of putting into your power to venture a shrewd guess; in making which, you are only working in the destined vocation of man, for the world is only guesswork all over, and you yourself are only guesswork as a part of it. The reader of the _Mercury_ was verily Mr. John Cowie, whilom butler to Mr. John Napier, and now waiter in the Lonsdale Arms of the obscure Kirby--a place like Peebles, where, if you wanted to deposit a secret, you could do so by crying it out at the market-cross; and, moreover, he was verily in possession of the key to the Napier mystery.
Accordingly, Mr. White of Mill"s Court in two days afterwards received a letter, informing him that John Cowie was the writer of the same, and that, if a reasonable consideration were held out to him, he would proceed to the northern metropolis, and there settle for ever a case which apparently had kept the newsmongers of Edinburgh in aliment for a length of time much exceeding the normal nine days. Opportune and happily come in the very nick of time as the latter was--for the delay allowed by the court had all but expired--Mr. White saw the danger of promising anything which could be construed into a reward; but he could use other means of decoying the shy bird into his meshes; and these he used in his answer with such effect, that the man who could solve the mystery was in Edinburgh at the end of a week. Nor was Mr. White unprepared to receive him, for he had previously got a commission to examine him and take his deposition: but then an agent likes to know what a witness will say before he cites him; and the canny Scotchman, of all men in the world, is the most uncanny if brought to swear without some hope of being benefited by his oath. There was, therefore, need of tact as well as delicacy; and Mr. White contrived in the first place to get his man to take up his quarters in the house in Mill"s Court. A good supper and chambers formed the first demulcent--we do not say bribe, because, by a legal fiction, all eating and drinking is set down to the score of hospitality. A Scotch breakfast followed in the morning, at which were present Mrs. White and Mrs. Hislop, and our favourite Henney--the last of whom, spite of all the efforts of her putative mother to keep from her the secret of her birth and prospects, had caught the infection of the general topic of the city, and wondered at her strange fortune, much as the paladin in the "Orlando" did when he got into the moon. No man can precognosce like a woman, and here were three; but perhaps they might have all failed, had it not been for the natural art of Henney, who, out of pure goodness and grat.i.tude, was so delighted with the man who had rolled her in a blanket and sent her to her beloved mother, as she still called her, that she promised to make him butler at Eastleys, and keep him comfortable all his days.
"Now," said the cautious agent, "this promise of Henney"s is not made in consideration of your giving evidence for her before the commissioner."
"I"m thinking of nothing but her face," said John. "I could swear to it out of a thousand; and Heaven bless her! for I think I am again in the once happy house in Meggat"s Land."
And John pretended he was wiping a morsel of egg from his mouth, while the handkerchief was extended as far as the eye.
"A terrible night that was," he continued. "Mrs. Napier had been in labour all day; and when Mrs. Kemp told me to tell my master that my lady had been delivered of TWINS--"
"_Twins_!" cried they all, as if moved by some sympathetic chord which ran from heart to heart.
"Ay, twins," he repeated; "one dead, and another living--even you yourself, Henney, who are as like your father as if there never had been a Captain Preston in the world."
And thus was John Cowie precognosced. We need not say that he was that very day examined before the commissioner. He gave an account of all the proceedings of the house in Meggat"s Land on the eventful night to which we have referred. The case was no longer a puzzle; and accordingly a decision was given in favour of Henrietta, whereby we have one other example of truth and right emerging from darkness into light. Some time afterwards, the heiress, with Mrs. Hislop alongside, and John Cowie on the driver"s box, proceeded to Eastleys and took possession; where Henrietta acted the part of a generous lady, Mrs. Hislop that of a kind of a dowager, and John was once more butler in the house of the Napiers.
We stop here. Those who feel interest enough in the fortunes of Henney to inquire when and whom she married, and what were the subsequent fortunes of a life so strangely begun, will do well to go to Eastleys.
THE ORPHAN.
About forty years ago, a post-chaise was a sight more novel in the little hamlet of Thorndean, than silk gowns in country churches during the maidenhood of our great-grandmothers; and, as one drew up at the only public-house in the village, the inhabitants, old and young, startled by the unusual and merry sound of its wheels, hurried to the street. The landlady, on the first notice of its approach, had hastily bestowed upon her goodly person the additional recommendation of a clean cap and ap.r.o.n; and, still tying the ap.r.o.n-strings, ran bustling to the door, smiling, colouring, and courtesying, and courtesying and colouring again, to the yet unopened chaise. Poor soul! she knew not well how to behave--it was an epoch in her annals of innkeeping. At length the coachman, opening the door, handed out a lady in widow"s weeds. A beautiful, golden-haired child, apparently not exceeding five years of age, sprang to the ground without a.s.sistance, and grasped her extended hand. "What an image o" beauty!" exclaimed some half-dozen bystanders, as the fair child lifted her lovely face of smiles to the eyes of her mother. The lady stepped feebly towards the inn, and though the landlady"s heart continued to practise a sort of fluttering motion, which communicated a portion of its agitation to her hands, she waited upon her unexpected and unusual guests with a kindliness and humility that fully recompensed for the expertness of a practised waiter. About half an hour after the arrival of her visitors, she was seen bustling from the door, her face, as the villagers said, bursting with importance. They were still in groups about their doors, and in the middle of the little street, discussing the mysterious arrival; and, as she hastened on her mission, she was a.s.sailed with a dozen such questions as these--"Wat ye wha she is?" "Is she ony great body?" "Hae ye ony guess what brought her here?" and, "Is yon bonny creature her ain bairn?" But to these and sundry other interrogatories, the important hostess gave for answer, "Hoot, I hae nae time to haver the noo." She stopped at a small, but certainly the most genteel house in the village, occupied by a Mrs. Douglas, who, in the country phrase, was a very douce, decent sort of an old body, and the widow of a Cameronian minister. In the summer season Mrs. Douglas let out her little parlour to lodgers, who visited the village to seek health, or for a few weeks"
retirement. She was compelled to do this from the narrowness of her circ.u.mstances; for, though she was a "clever-handed woman," as her neighbours said, "she had a sair fecht to keep up an appearance onyway like the thing ava." In a few minutes Mrs. Douglas, in a clean cap, a muslin kerchief round her neck, a quilted black bombazine gown, and snow-white ap.r.o.n, followed the landlady up to the inn. In a short time she returned, the stranger lady leaning upon her arm, and the lovely child leaping like a young lamb before them. Days and weeks pa.s.sed away, and the good people of Thorndean, notwithstanding all their surmises and inquiries, were no wiser regarding their new visitor; all they could learn was, that she was the widow of a young officer, who was one of the first that fell when Britain interfered with the French Revolution; and the mother and her child became known in the village by the designation of "Mrs. Douglas"s twa pictures!"--an appellation bestowed on them in reference to their beauty.
The beautiful destroyer, however, lay in the mother"s heart, now paling her cheeks like the early lily, and again scattering over them the rose and the rainbow. Still dreaming of recovery, about eight months after her arrival in Thorndean, death stole over her like a sweet sleep. It was only a few moments before the angel hurled the fatal shaft, that the truth fell upon her soul. She was stretching forth her hand to her work-basket, her lovely child was prattling by her knee, and Mrs.
Douglas smiling like a parent upon both, striving to conceal a tear while she smiled, when the breathing of her fair guest became difficult, and the rose, which a moment before bloomed upon her countenance, vanished in a fitful streak. She flung her feeble arms around the neck of her child, who now wept upon her bosom, and exclaimed, "Oh! my Elizabeth, who will protect you now, my poor, poor orphan?" Mrs. Douglas sprang to her a.s.sistance. She said she had much to tell, and endeavoured to speak; but a gurgling sound only was heard in her throat; she panted for breath; the rosy streaks, deepening into blue, came and went upon her cheeks like the midnight dances of the northern lights; her eyes flashed with a momentary brightness more than mortal, and the spirit fled. The fair orphan still clung to the neck, and kissed the yet warm lips of her dead mother.
As yet she was too young to see all the dreariness of the desolation around her; but she was indeed an orphan in the most cruel meaning of the word. Her mother had preserved a mystery over her sorrows and the circ.u.mstances of her life, which Mrs. Douglas had never endeavoured to penetrate. And now she was left to be as a mother to the helpless child, for she knew not if she had another friend; and all that she had heard of the mother"s history was recorded on the humble stone which she placed over her grave: "_Here resteth the body of Isabella Morton, widow of Captain Morton; she died amongst us a stranger, but beloved_." The whole property to which the fair orphan became heir by the death of her mother did not amount to fifty pounds, and amongst the property no doc.u.ment was found which could throw any light upon who were her relatives, or if she had any. But the heart of Mrs. Douglas had already adopted her as a daughter; and, circ.u.mscribed as her circ.u.mstances were, she trusted that He who provided food for the very birds of heaven, would provide the orphan"s morsel.
Years rolled on, and Elizabeth Morton grew in stature and in beauty, the pride of her protector, and the joy of her age. But the infirmities of years grew upon her foster-mother, and, disabling her from following her habits of industry, stern want entered her happy cottage. Still Elizabeth appeared only as a thing of joy, contentment, and grat.i.tude; and often did her evening song beguile her aged friend"s sigh into a smile. And to better their hard lot, she hired herself to watch a few sheep upon the neighbouring hills, to the steward of a gentleman named Sommerville, who, about the time of her mother"s death, had purchased the estate of Thorndean. He was but little beloved, for he was a hard master, and a bad husband; and more than once he had been seen at the hour of midnight, in the silent churchyard, standing over the grave of Mrs. Morton. This gave rise to not a few whisperings respecting the birth of poor Elizabeth. He had no children; and a nephew, who resided in his house, was understood to be his heir. William Sommerville was about a year older than our fair orphan; and ever, as he could escape the eye of his uncle, he would fly to the village to seek out Elizabeth as a playmate. And now, while she tended the few sheep, he would steal round the hills, and placing himself by her side, teach her the lessons he had that day been taught, while his arm in innocence rested on her neck, their glowing cheeks touched each other, and her golden curls played around them. Often were their peaceful lessons broken by the harsh voice and the blows of his uncle. But still William stole to the presence of his playmate and pupil, until he had completed his fourteenth year; when he was to leave Thorndean, preparatory to entering the army. He was permitted to take a hasty farewell of the villagers, for they all loved the boy; but he went only to the cottage of Mrs.
Douglas. As he entered, Elizabeth wept, and he also burst into tears.
Their aged friend beheld the yearnings of a young pa.s.sion that might terminate in sorrow; and taking his hand, she prayed G.o.d to prosper him, and bade him farewell. She was leading him to the door, when Elizabeth raised her tearful eyes; he beheld them, and read their meaning, and, leaping forward, threw his arms round her neck, and printed the first kiss on her forehead! "Do not forget me, Elizabeth," he cried, and hurried from the house.
Seven years from this period pa.s.sed away. The lovely girl was now transformed into the elegant woman, in the summer majesty of her beauty.
For four years Elizabeth had kept a school in the village, to which her gentleness and winning manners drew prosperity; and her grey-haired benefactress enjoyed the reward of her benevolence. Preparations were making at Thorndean Hall for the reception of William, who was now returning as Lieutenant Sommerville. A post-chaise in the village had then become a sight less rare; but several cottagers were a.s.sembled before the inn to welcome the young laird. He arrived, and with him a gentleman between forty and fifty years of age. They had merely become acquainted as travelling companions; and the stranger being on his way northward, had accepted his invitation to rest at his uncle"s for a few days. The footpath to the Hall lay through the churchyard, about a quarter of a mile from the village. It was a secluded path, and Elizabeth was wont to retire to it between school hours, and frequently to spend a few moments in silent meditation over her mother"s grave. She was gazing upon it, when a voice arrested her attention, saying, "Elizabeth--Miss Morton!" The speaker was Lieutenant Sommerville, accompanied by his friend. To the meeting of the young lovers we shall add nothing. But the elder stranger gazed on her face and trembled, and looked on her mother"s grave and wept. "Morton!" he repeated, and read the inscription on the humble stone, and again gazed on her face, and again wept. "Lady!" he exclaimed, "pardon a miserable man--what was the name of your mother?--who the family of your father? Answer me, I implore you!" "Alas! I know neither," said the wondering and now unhappy Elizabeth. "My name is Morton," cried the stranger; "I had a wife; I had a daughter once, and my Isabella"s face was thy face!" While he yet spoke, the elder Sommerville drew near to meet his nephew. His eyes and the stranger"s met. "Sommerville!" exclaimed the stranger, starting.
"The same," replied the other, his brow blackening like thunder, while a trembling pa.s.sed over his body. He rudely grasped the arm of his nephew, and dragged him away. The interesting stranger accompanied Elizabeth to the house of Mrs. Douglas. Painful were his inquiries; for, while they kindled hope and a.s.surance, they left all in cruel uncertainty. "Oh, sir!" said Mrs. Douglas, "if ye be the faither o" my blessed bairn, I dinna wonder at auld Sommerville growing black in the face when he saw ye; for, when want came hard upon our heels, and my dear motherless and faitherless bairn was driven to herd his sheep by the brae-sides--there wad the poor, dear, delicate bairn (for she was as delicate then as she is bonnie now) been lying--the sheep a" feeding round about her, and her readin" at her Bible, just like a little angel, her lee lane, when the brute wad come sleekin" down ahint her, an" giein" her a drive wi" his foot, cursed her for a little lazy something I"m no gaun to name, an"
rugged her bonnie yellow hair, till he had the half o" it torn out o"
her head; or the monster wad riven the blessed book out o" her hand, an"
thrown it wi" an oath as far as he could drive. But the nephew was aye a bit fine callant; only, ye ken, wi" my bairn"s prospects, it wasna my part to encourage onything."
Eagerly did the stranger, who gave his name as Colonel Morton, hang over the fair being who had conjured up the sunshine of his youth. One by one, he was weeping and tracing every remembered feature of his wife upon her face, when doubt again entered his mind, and he exclaimed in bitterness, "Merciful Heaven! convince me! Oh, convince me that I have found my child!" The few trinkets that belonged to Mrs. Morton had been parted with in the depth of her poverty. At that moment Lieutenant Sommerville hastily entered the cottage. He stated that his uncle had left the Hall, and delivered a letter from him to Colonel Morton. It was of few words, and as follows:
"Morton,--We were rivals for Isabella"s love; you were made happy, and I miserable. But I have not been unrevenged. It was I who betrayed you into the hands of the enemy. It was I who reported you dead--who caused the tidings to be hastened to your widowed wife, and followed them to England. It was I who poisoned the ear of her friends, until they cast her off; I dogged her to her obscurity, that I might enjoy my triumph; but death thwarted me as you had done. Yet I will do one act of mercy--she sleeps beneath the grave where we met yesterday; and the lady before whom you wept--is your own daughter."
He cast down the letter, and exclaimed, "My child! my long lost child!"
And, in speechless joy, the father and the daughter rushed to each other"s arms. Shall we add more? The elder Sommerville left his native land, which he never again disgraced with his presence. William and Elizabeth wandered by the hill-side in bliss, catching love and recollections from the scene. In a few months her father bestowed on him her hand, and Mrs. Douglas, in joy and in pride, bestowed upon both her blessing.
THE BURGHER"S TALES.
THE BROWNIE OF THE WEST BOW.