A Scottish Story in Two Parts
by the author of "Margaret Maitland," & & [Margaret Oliphant].
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.2 #7 (Oct 1861).
Part I.—Chap. I.
"I'm glad to see you hame," said the old man.
"And I'm glad to win hame, faither," said Bell.
Such was the sober expression of feeling which passed between the father and daughter. The girl's colour was high, and her eyes full of tears; and the old man, while he spoke, did not venture to look at her, but fumbled about his snuff-box, and was evidently relieved when that salutation, slight as it was, was over. They had shaken hands with each other when Bell came: now everything went on as if they had parted yesterday, though the young woman had been away from home for two years.
And home had changed in that time. The mother, the sun of the domestic place, was gone; gone—buried a year ago in the hereditary churchyard five miles off with all her kindred; yet she stood there between them, hushing them to silence, making words impossible. Bell, you may suppose, would have spoken and wept, and poured out her heart, had it been possible; but the old man durst not trust himself to say words which might let loose that long-retained voiceless sorrow. What could words have done to it? Deeper than language was that mute recognition of their loss. She was gone! There was nobody to ask the anxious, of repeated questions—nobody to give ear to all the interrupted answers—nobody to speak the welcome, or surround the stranger with all that joyful surprise and curiosity, and eagerness, which is the soul of a return home. What is home when the mother is gone? Bell was glad to take her box up into her attic-room, and cry over it in a violent access of grief and disappointment. She knew it, but she did not know it, before; for it is hard to believe in death at a distance, and almost impossible to think that, though we know they are dead, they are no longer there.
Poor Bell had found it out—the word had attained its real translation; her mother was not anywhere to be found on that earth, and her father, whom her heart had imagined changed under the subliming touch of grief, was not changed, but the same. His loss had not made both father and mother of him. He was just as he had been when Bell went to service, more to relieve herself from his strict and critical rule than for any other motive. She sighed to herself, after she was done crying, and went slowly down the narrow staircase. The house was a homely little poor farmhouse, such as are still to be met with in the pastoral wilds of Dumfriesshire—scarcely deserving the name of a farm. A few acres of "arable" land and a hillside for "the beasts" was the extent of its domain; and a labourer and his wife, who lived in a thatched cottage near and were of Andrew Carr's kindred, were all the adherents of the house. Their eldest son herded the sheep, their small fry of children weeded the scanty turnips and potatoes, and lived in wild primitive liberty between the cottage and the hill. Such were all the human settlers at Whinnyrig. The farmhouse was only thatched, like its little dependency, but had an attic storey, with windows rising out of its thatched roof, and a kitchen big enough to have taken in the entire cottage; a rude, undecorated place—not a flower about it on one side or the other, though the cabbages were not contemptible. Neglected, dreary, half-savage, it lay in the evening light, speaking with a certain stern reticence, like that of its master, to the heart of the motherless young woman, Andrew Carr himself had been heard to acknowledge, that "A' things had gaen wrang since the wife was away." Bell's accustomed eyes saw the difference with even stronger perception than her father's; and it was to supply that vacant place that she had come home.
She went and sat down beside the old man in the great earthen-floored kitchen. Though it was summer, the fire was glowing red as turf-fires do burn; filling the place with aromatic odours. The father sat close by in the high-backed wooden chair rudely cushioned, and covered with checked blue and white linen. He sat within the glow, not much enlightened by it, twisting his thumbs and gazing into the fire. Bell sat down too, at a distance from him, with her hands crossed on her lap, in punctilious observance of the old-fashioned notion, that, "coming off a journey," it was a necessary homage to propriety to do nothing. It was getting dark; the horse and the cows were "suppered," and all was quiet about Whinnyrig; but Bell, who was near the window, could see those long lucid stretches of evening sky, the breaks of primrose light, the green-blue wistful horizon, and latitudes of cloud. Such stillness! You could hear the breathing of these two in their hushed house. It was quite necessary to break this hush by some attempt at conversation. But what was poor Bell to talk of? When she essayed to speak, the hysterica passio climbed into her throat.
"Have ye had ony trouble wi' the beasts the year, faither?" at last faltered Bell. It was the subject most congenial to that locality; and Bell saw no absurdity in the contrast between her question and her thoughts.
"There never was a year but there was fash with the beasts," said the old man; "and this aboon a', as was to be expected, I a' but lost my best cow."
"That's Lillie," said Bell, with a little eagerness. "Bonnie beast! she sall aye be milkit with my ain hand while I'm at hame."
"Whisht with your haivers! Lillie's sell't!" said her father, with some irritation.
"Sell't!" echoed Bell. The tears came fairly rushing to her eyes in the dark. She turned her head away from the chimney-corner, and looked straight out of the window into the wistful sky. Her heart filled; it was all her self-command could do to keep down a fit of tears; but she regained her self-possession at last.
"You didna tell me when you wrote," she said, apologetically.
"And if I had, what wad hae been the guid?" said Andrew Carr. "It's no in my way writing letters. I wrote to you when—when it happened; and I wrote you afore the term to come hame; and what could be expected from me mair?"
Another long silence fell upon the father and daughter. Bell, with her hands in her lap, in that unusual solemn Sabbath-day idleness, looked away into the wistful summer evening sky, and watched it change and darken without perceiving what it was she saw. Her father sat looking down into the red glow of the peat fire. Their silence was more touching than any lamentations. They had no heart to speak to each other. The link between them, without that mother whose presence had put a certain amount of inevitable warmth into it, was not much more than an arbitrary bond; for the old farmer of Whinnyrig had never either interested himself in his daughter, nor cared to recognize the wonderful difference between life as it appeared to her and life as he knew it. So there was a dead wall between them when no living heart was there to bring them together. Poor Bell sat tearless, trying vainly to think what she could say—making plans within her ardent youthful mind how she would soften and subdue him by her tenderness, and impatient that she could not begin this moment—but was, like himself, voiceless and spell-bound. She could not have told any one how long this silence lasted; but it was only when in the darkness she saw a figure approaching the house that Bell sprang to her feet, with an impatience which could not be longer restrained. She knew the very shape and gait of that figure, as it came slowly through the twilight—knew it by that sharp-sightedness of dislike and repugnance which is as undeceivable as love. She made haste to light the little oil-lamp which stood high up on the mantel-shelf, and threw a dim, smoky light from that elevation upon the homely apartment. She even made an unnecessary noise and bustle as she did so, as if to draw her father's attention. Her own frame was tingling with sudden vexation and impatience, and her heart within her demanding utterance. But Andrew Carr took no notice: he did not even raise his head when she bustled about the hearth and stretched up to place the lamp in its usual position. He shifted his chair a little, to give her room, without saying a word. Bell's patience was almost exhausted.
"There's James Lowther coming up the brae," she said at last, in a restrained voice.
"Ay?" said the old man, without surprise.
"You're aye friends yet, I suppose?" said Bell.
"Ou, ay—aye friends," said her father, in the same indifferent tone.
Bell was beside herself: her hand trembled, as she fastened the lamp. The irritation of grief and disappointment, and solitude, seized upon her. "Eh me! and it was for this I left my guid place?" she said to herself under her breath, as she put fresh peats on the fire.
"What are ye saying, Bell?" asked Andrew Carr.
"I'm saying nae doubt he's a married man and doing weel, that ye're aye friends with him, faither," said Bell.
"He's just as muckle marriet as ye are," cried the old man; "and if ye're no ceevil to the decent lad, ye'll get little comfort here. She said it hersel' before she was ta'en, and I'll hae naebody illused in my house."
Bell's pent-up feelings relieved themselves in a long, heavy, impatient sigh: she saw in a moment the whole course that lay before her—the domestic persecution, the loathed love, all those assaults of rustic courtship which from the wrong person are hard inflictions even to a country beauty. She went hastily to the great aumrie at one end of the kitchen, and took from a corner a large bundle of stockings put there to be mended. It was not very dainty work; but Bell was only a country girl, and had no pretentions to be a young lady. She took her seat near the fire, within reach of the light, and drew one of the stockings over her arm to darn it. She was seated thus, her face bent over her work, when the unwelcome visitor entered.
His personal appearance did not explain the secret of his bad reception. He was well-enough looking, a brown-haired, ruddy, stalwart man of Annandale, lifting his feet high as he walked, as if he felt himself still among the heather; and not without a gleam of real eagerness and lover-like anxiety in his sunburnt face. He looked wistfully in at the door, and lingered for the invitation, "Come in bye! Jamie, come in bye!" which after all only came from the gruff voice of Andrew Carr; and, when he had obeyed, removed his cap and scratched his head, and looked at Bell, longing to speak. Bell took no notice of his bashful looks; she gave him a little dry nod without turning her eyes towards him, and with great devotion went on with her stocking. The embarrassing silence was only broken by the old man, who after a while began the ordinary topics of rural conversation: what were the prospects of the hay; how the turnips were looking; and whether any disease had yet been heard of among the potatoes. Andrew Carr spoke with great deliberation, and required little answer; Bell darned rapidly, without ever raising her head; and James Lowther sat by, saying little, uneasy under the full glow of the fire. Behind the group the evening sky was still darkening through the uncurtained windows, and opening out a streak of wistful light in the blue perspective. It was a very still, placid, homely scene ; but, had these human creatures been visible to the eye in the real sentiments which possessed them, how speedily would the group have risen into the world of passion. That old man, slowly droning there about his fields, was as sternly determined to bend his daughter's will to his own as if he had been a powerful despot, and she a rebellious kingdom: behind the rustic lover's embarrassed looks, fierce love and jealousy were hidden: while Bell, all innocent in her domestic occupation, tingled to her very finger-points with such excitement, irritation, and obstinate resolve, such restrained indignation and grief, as might have made a passionate heroine of the humble young woman. But, to see their homely ways and words, who could have imagined the little drama secretly going on under this homely roof?
"There's no mony would take to their wark so industrious the very night they came hame," said Lowther, at last—speaking at, as he dared not directly address, the lady of his love.
"Ou, ay—Bell's grand at her wark; she'll make a guid wife when her time comes," said Andrew Carr.
"And that'll never come," exclaimed Bell, with sudden bitterness, surprised out of her self-control.
"The lasses aye say sae," said James Lowther; "but it's weel they're no sae ill as their word, or what would become of us a'? They say, when ane's mair positive than anither, that's a guid sign."
Bell did not condescend to answer; but she raised her head, and gave her unlucky admirer a look which made him pause in sudden discomfiture.
For she was Andrew Carr's daughter, though she was not like him. She was good and honest, but not meek, by nature. Did they think to overcome her by such poor artifices? A thousand times, no!
"Broomlees maun be pleasant the noo," said the old man; "it's a bonnie bit. I mind upon't in your grandfaither's time, Jamie. You and yours have been lang on that land."
"Far langer than the laird," said James, with a laugh. "The Ha' house has changed hands twice since Broomlees was in my name. But there's great need of a woman-body about the place. It's no what it was when you kent it first, nor what we'll have it again, in time, if I get my will."
"Ay, ay; I dare to say ye'll do weel, if ye get a guid wife," said Andrew Carr.
Bell listened to this conversation with a perfect fever in her veins. Knowing what they meant, and knowing how well they knew certain past events which were fresh in her memory, it was intolerable to the high-spirited girl to hear herself so spoken at. But a certain natural sense of dignity acted as a curb upon her, and restrained her tongue.
"I'm thinking ye'll be glad to be in your ain house," said the adventurous suitor, after another pause; "a strange house can never be like ane's ain place, though it may be grander; and to you, that might be your ain mistress, not to say have servants at your ca' --"
"That's impossible!" cried Bell; "I dinna ca' Marget Brown a servant, nor never will. Her man's our second cousin, as everybody kens."
"But weel ye ken I wasna meaning Marget Brown," said the emboldened lover.
"I ken nothing about what ye mean," cried Bell, rising up with angry haste, "nor I care nothing, that's mair; but ye might have had the sense to let a poor lass alane the first night she's come hame, and her mither away. If ye had held your peace and respected a person, I might have forgiven ye, Jamie Lowther. But eh, man, ye make me mind; ye bring it a' back to me as clear as yesterday. I wouldna say there was anither man in Annandale but would have had the sense to leave the poor auld man and me to ourselves the first night, kenning a' the changes that hae been in this house since I gaed away."
When she had uttered this indignant speech, Bell dropped on her chair again for a moment, and wept some hot, angry tears; then rising, wiped them indignantly away with her apron, took a candlestick from the shelf, lighted the candle at the fire, and went away with hasty, excited steps, holding her head high, and looking at nobody. Her admirer sat and stared discomfited. Her father said nothing. They kept silent when they were left alone till Bell's steps, echoing her anger, had sounded up the wooden, resounding stair, and were lost in the stillness of her own room. Then at last the old man spoke—
"Ye'll take nae notice, Jamie?" said the farmer of Whinnyrig.
"No the noo," said Lowther, vindictively; then, changing his tone, "I'm meaning the women maun hae their spite out," he added. "No, I'll never heed."
"I'm nae sae sure ye ken the crater after a'," said Andrew Carr, with a movement of compunction. "She's like the wife in outward appearance, but she's a rael Carr in her spirit. If it was for her advantage to have her ain way—but, it canna be that—it canna be that! Do you ever hear onything o' yon ne'er-do-weel, now?"
"It's no likely," said Lowther, with a little contempt; "if he's living he's at the other end o' the world, and I canna just say I'm so great in his favour as to make him write letters to me."
"Aweel, weel time tries a'; but I'll no keep you ony later the night, Jamie, my man," said Bell's father. "Come back soon, but no ower-soon, and let bygones be bygones; it'll a' come about in time, if ye have but patience a bit."
"Patience!" echoed Lowther to himself, as he stood on the broken moorland ground below, and looked back at the thatched house of Whinnyrig and the light which streamed from the attic window; "aye, patience! But if I aince hae ye, I'll mak ye pay for this, ye witch," he muttered, shaking his fist at the wmdow,—and with this virtuous sentiment strode slowly home from his lover's journey, leaving the father and daughter still further apart than when he came.
Chapter II.
The light shone faintly out of that attic window long after all the neighbourhood was hushed to sleep. The little room inside had few attractions, and little to distinguish it as a maiden's bower. The sloping roof, the are walls, the uncarpeted floor, and Bell's great box standing under the window, were unlovely surroundings. But the farmer's daughter of Whinnyrig was not fastidious nor fanciful. She sat at the little table with her Bible open before her, vainly trying to fix her thoughts to what she had been reading, while, instead of the sacred words, a phantasmagoria of past scenes kept gliding before her eyes, and drew her mind astray. She clasped her hard but comely hands over her forehead, and shut out the light from her eyes, suffering those visions which would not be forbidden—homely pictures, no way sublimated out of that homely scene, yet full of the deepest primitive emotion. She saw herself come into that same apartment all dewy-eyed and blushing, half afraid of her own beauty and happiness, the beaming face that caught her eye in the little glass; and following her came the mother, quick to mark that crisis, to hear the half-told tale, and shelter the girl from her own secret, shamefaced terror. Oh, hour of tenderest gladness! almost sweeter than the troth-plight which preceded it. But darker were the scenes that followed. She saw the doubtful household looks, the mother's hasty glance in at her chamber-door, not waiting except to say good night, afraid of conference. Then the tender, troubled, suggestive speeches, the hints about sailors and their temptations, the father's angry preference of "a decent lad at hame," all the slowly accumulating distrust, dislike, and doubt which rose like a mist round the figure of her sailor-lover—then, unaware of his secret enemies, far off at sea. Then, when the clouds had gathered to their darkest, that storm that at last had violently rent the two asunder. But the sobs broke poor Bell's heart as she remembered herself fallen upon that bed in her despair, and her mother silent, thinking nothing was to be said, stroking the poor cheek from which that tempest had taken all the youthful colour. "Willie thankless! Willie a traitor! Tell me I'm dead, and I'll believe you sooner," sobbed out Bell, repeating in imagination her own very words, and thinking she felt her mother's hand, hopeless of all other comfort, stroking with a pathetic, silent caress her eighteen-year-old colourless cheek.
That was four long years ago. It was James Lowther, of Broomlees, that had put that stigma on his sailor cousin. He said the boy had been trained, and loved, and set out in life by old Broomlees, his uncle and guardian, and that Bell's lover had not only used his uncle with the basest ingratitude, but had appropriated to his own purposes money entrusted to him, and brought the old man into trouble. Some circumstances of dissipation and fickleness had not been wanting to increase the force of the picture. Andrew Carr, entirely convinced, had forbidden Bell ever to see the culprit, or let him know the reason of his dismissal. Her mother, wiser in her humility, would not yield implicit credit to the talebearer, and yet would not justify the accused. All that the good woman could do was to stroke with her kind hand that passionate young cheek, and "wait for Providence," as she said. But Bell was too young, too impatient, too hot-blooded to wait for Providence. She wrote a passionate, appealing letter to Willie at sea, calling on him to come forward and clear himself. She denounced James Lowther with all the fiery vehemence of a woman and a Carr. Things came to a violent crisis, and threatened disruption of all the peace and union of the household. Day by day poor Bell, with dry eyes burning with anxiety, looked for Willie's letter; day by day her father stalked about his little farm, with outbursts of impatient wrath and indignation against the drooping girl; day by day her mother soothed her compassionately, looked on and prayed, and said nothing; and night by night James Lowther disturbed the household with his hateful presence, and sought the heart in its rebound—that changeable female heart of which so many a song and story is told; but which was no more like the strong-beating, passionate, honest heart of Isabell Carr than midnight is like noon.
Such things could have been borne; but a harder agony followed the unexplainable mystery and anguish of Bell's life. Willie's letter did not come, Willie did not write—even more, did not return—never was heard of—disappeared totally into that blank, aching, dreadful darkness which every where encompasses the little bit of the world we see. If his ship had been lost, the dreadful secret might have been explained. But his ship was not lost: it arrived, and he arrived at that far foreign port—the very name of which, if you mentioned it, would still send a thrill of pain through Bell's vigorous frame. But there the darkness swallowed up the brave and candid sailor; what he had to say for himself, or, if he had nothing to say for himself, and the lie against which Bell struggled was true, nobody could tell. The anguish of that long expectation need not be told; the quiet years had swallowed it up and gone down upon it, leaving no trace. Bell went away when she could endure no longer, "to service," to quench her heart, or get new life into it; in that primeval struggle with hard labour and outside facts, which is the best discipline for human creatures. She had fought her battle so far bravely; till now, at last, when she had come home.
But, to see before her very eyes that author of her calamity; to know that she had been sent for—not to fill her dead mother's place, nor from the impulse of a relenting heart, softened by sorrow—but to be wooed and carried home by this man, the object of all the resentment possible to woman, the cause of all her sufferings—Bell would have been more than a mere human daughter could she have borne it. Her breast swelled in a passion of grief, indignation, injured love, and injured pride. With a hysterical gasp it swelled, "as if it would burst." These emotions, which rose so high in her own retirement, where no mother followed now to soften the tide of passion or cool the burning cheek, would never be disclosed to the light of day. All a Scotchwoman's jealous reticence—all the proud, shy, self-control of a country-girl, brought up in such a house as that of Whinnyrig, built strong barriers around to confine the flood within its source; but here, where no one could see, the passionate bosom swelled, the wild hands clenched each other, the bitterness poured itself forth. There were gleams in the east of early dawn, and the atmosphere had lightened, with a gradual smile and clearing of outline, all outside, before sleep visited the eyes of Bell. Ere that time she had nerved herself, as best she could, for that prospect before her. These daily, nightly persecutions; the necessity of bearing with this man's presence; hearing him, seeing him, knowing why he came; even, perhaps, tolerating his suit, so far as being within the same apartment with him made it necessary—no wonder that it was with a sick impatience and disgust of everything, that Bell, at last, closed her wearied, hot eyes upon the dawning light.
"And he's sell't Lillie!" were the first words Bell said, as, hastily dressing herself, she looked out at her little window next morning, and saw Robert Brown's black cow already in the dewy field. The bitterness of this exclamation could only be understood by an Annandale girl, proudly conscious of one beautiful fair cow among the little group of black cattle so usual in Dumfriesshire. Amid all her more engrossing troubles, Bell could yet feel a pang for the loss of Lillie, her mother's favourite, the "grandest milker" in the whole parish. "It's just like a' the rest," she said to herself bitterly, as she went down stairs. And perhaps it did not give a more Christian gentleness to her feelings as she descended into the hard beginning of her unlovely life.
When the father and daughter met that morning, neither of them took any notice whatever of the scene of last night. In such primitive Scotch households, "good-night" and "good-morrow" are dispensed with from members of the same family. There were no morning salutations between Andrew Carr and his daughter. They took their homely breakfast together with little conversation. What talk there was, was about "the beasts," that subject on which an Annandale peasant is naturally eloquent. The old man had bethought himself that there was a calf of Lillie's in the byer, and condescended to conciliate Bell by this fact, And Bell, we are obliged to confess, though it may convey a depreciating impression of her character and mind, was conciliated and pleased to hear it. She went about her work more lightly in consequence. She patted the long-legged, foolish animal, called it "my bonnie woman," fed it out of her own hand—did everything an experienced country-woman could do to attract its youthful affections. She had a hard day's work before her, as always, and no time for thinking. Marget Brown, too, came up at an early hour from the cottage, and the two fell into close conversation, as became old friends. On the whole, Bell was not miserable. She was nothing in the world of a heroine. When she went out to the door and lingered a moment in her pretty country dress—that short gown and petticoat which has almost disappeared out of Scotland—and, putting up her hand to shelter her eyes, looked out upon the familiar landscape—it was, indeed, the landscape she looked at, and not any illusive picture in her own imagination; the low pastoral hills, not very far off, with all their different tinges of colour; the rich wooded line which betrayed towards the east the course of "the water;" the "peat-moss," on the other side of the little hillock, with its fantastic paths and deep cuttings, glimmering where the sun caught them with gleams of water—all this was fair and sweet to the accustomed eyes of Bell. And not less sweet was the hum that filled the atmosphere every where—an indefinite mist of sound, in which poultry, sheep, cattle, and men had all their distinct inarticulate strain, and which now and then the soft low of a cow or the sharp bark of a dog defined for an instant and made complete. When, at last, her own thoughts began to reflect themselves in that landscape, and Bell remembered that along that moorland road last night her unwelcome admirer had made his appearance, she dropped her hand from her eyes and turned back to her work—wiser in unconscious natural wisdom than many a great philosopher. Such indulgences of sentiment were not for the manager of Whinnyrig—not, at least, in good daylight and with work in hand to do.
"I dinna doubt ye'll mak a change—you ought at your time o' life, with a' the world before you," said Marget Brown; "it's no like me, hadden doun with wark and weans. Young folks dinna ken, as I say to Robbie mony 's the day—dinna ken the half nor the quarter o' what's before them; no that I would envy you. Bell, my woman, ye'll have an awfu' handfu' of the auld man, if ye canna turn your heart to young Broomlees."
"If ye want to please me, Marget, ye'll never mention his name," said Bell, shortly.
"I'm sure it's nae pleasure to me," said Marget. "I canna say he ever took my fancy, yon lad—nae mair like some o' his kin—But whisht, whisht, we're no to speak o' that. The mistress, ye ken, she never would say one thing nor anither. She was aye for waiting upon Providence; she was aye a rael guid woman, as was seen on her at the last. But, Bell, if ye'll believe me, I dinna doubt she got mair light on some things at the hinder end."
Bell's face flushed with sudden excitement; she held out her hands in a wild appeal to her companion, and gasped an inarticulate inquiry which startled Marget.
"I'm no meaning onything to make ye look so white," cried Marget, "naething out o' the way. Bell, my woman! Bless me, no! Naething uncanny ever came to a saint like yon. But just when a' was maist ower, and me at the bedside—(and sair, sair vexed we were that ye couldna be sent for—but death aye seems sudden whenever he comes)—she held out her bit thin hands, and says she, 'Willie! bless ye, my man!' says she, 'ye'll make my bairn happy yet.' Bell! Eh my woman! I wouldna have tell't ye if I had thought ye would have ta'en't sae muekle to heart."
For poor Bell, as was but natural, had fallen into a passion of tears. When these were spent, however, the Scotch girl quickly recovered her composure. It was a wonderful relief to her heart to be at liberty to speak about her mother at all, and the two entered upon that sad engrossing subject with all the minutiae of recollection, and all the eagerness of inquiry which specially belongs to the death-bed. But when Marget had unburdened her heart of all her remembrances, she returned to her original starting-point.
"But, mind my words," said Marget, "Jamie Lowther 0' Broomlees has grippit the auld man fast, Bell. He's gotten our maister in his toils, as I say to Robbie—some way or other he's gotten that influence on him a body daurna say a word. And, eh Bell, if ye canna turn your heart to young Broomlees—as indeed it's little to be expected—ye'll hae an awfu' handfu' o' the auld man!"
Bell heard this augury in silence; she knew it well enough without any warning. Just now she had her mother's gleam of death-bed wandering or insight—which was it?—to comfort her. There was no doubt on the subject in Bell's mind; she received these words as if they had come from Heaven—a sacredness more than earthly was about the utterance of the dying. It came to her like a ray of light in the surrounding darkness—she felt her heart buoyed up with an unexplainable exhilaration. If the influence waned, it was at least ineffable for the time.
That night Andrew Carr himself entered upon the same all-important subject. The two were alone together as before; but Bell was busy with her stockings from the beginning of the conversation, and that very fact helped to fortify and calm her.
"Bell," said her father, "it's my desire you should show some civility to Jamie Lowther. Ye ken what he comes here for as weel as me."
"He might ken better than to come here at a'," said Bell, with involuntary bitterness.
"That's no a manner to speak to me," said Andrew Carr; "I require ye, upon your obedience, to do what I'm telling ye. It's for you Jamie Lowther comes here, and I've promised him he's to get you."
"Faither!" cried Bell, with a start and cry of indignation.
"I'm speaking plain fae'," cried the irritated old man; "I'm in my ain house, where I've aye been king and priest. Providence gied me the charge ower you, and it's your business to obey."
"If it's to be ceevil, I'll be ceevil," said Bell, restraining herself with 4 great effort; "and I'm no unceevil," she added, in a lower voice.
"Hear to what I've got to say to you. I've chosen him for your man—I've promised you for a wife to him," said Andrew Carr; "ye're mine to dispose of baith by God's law and man's, and I tell ye I've gien Jamie Lowther my word."
"But, faither, ye ken it canna be," said Bell, holding her breath so strongly, to keep herself calm, that her words ended in a gasp.
"Wherefore canna it be? I've gien my word it shall be," said Andrew Carr.
"You're hard, but you're no that hard," cried poor Bell, always struggling after the meekness which was so difficult to her. "If I was young and free, I might bend my heart to your bidding, faither; but ye ken a' as weel as me. Let alane a' that's happened, and a' I blame Jamie Lowther for; let alane I count him for my enemy, though I wish him no ill; let alane a' thing but the ae thing—there's this still," said Bell, a sob escaping from her in the midst of her words, "I like anither lad better,—and oh, faither, faither! you ken that, and so does he."
"It makes nae difference," said the old man: "if ye can speak up in my face, and name that ne'er-do-weel that cares nothing for you, as is weel seen; if ye've nae shame like ither women, it's no my blame—I lay my command upon you, and this is what ye are to do."
"But I canna," said Bell; "onything else in the world—onything else in the world, if it was my life."
"I wonder what the better I wad be o' your life," said the old man, testily; "your life! Na; onything but the only thing that's wanted! I've made up my mind; tak Jamie Lowther, or never mair ca' yourself buirn o' mine."
"If I was to be cast out of the house this moment; if I was to die on the moor, and never more see the light of day; if I was to be swallowed up by the earth, like Dathan and Abiram," cried Bell—gradually rising in irrestrainable emotion, wringing her hands, yet facing him with a pale look of resolve—for she knew her father well enough to know that he could keep even such a promise—"I'll die if ye like, and welcome, but I'll no perjure my soul!"
The two faced each other for a moment, both resolute, daring all things. Then the old man turned his chair round to the fire. "I'll gie ye three days to think," said Andrew Carr.
Bell sank down on her seat trembling, yet restraining herself. Three days! and it was but yesterday, with thoughts so different, that she had come home!