Allison Bain; Or, By a Way She Knew Not

by Margaret M. Robertson

Mrs Esselmont’s house stood on the hillside, facing the west. Behind it rose the seven dark firs which had given to the place its name. The tall firs and the hilltop hid from the house the sunshine of the early morning, but they stood a welcome shelter between it and the bleak east wind which came from the sea when the dreary time of the year had come.

The house was built of dull grey stone, with no attempt at ornament of any kind visible upon it. All its beauty was due to the ivy, which grew close and thick over the two ends, covering the high gables, and even the chimneys, and creeping more loosely about the windows in the front. Without the ivy and the two laburnums, which were scattering their golden blossoms over the grass when Allison saw it first, the place would have looked gloomy and sad.

But when one had fairly passed up the avenue, or rather the lane, lying between a hedge of hawthorn on one side and the rough stone dike which marked the bounds of the nearest neighbour on the other, and entered at the gate which opened on the lawn, it was not the dull grey house which one noticed first, but the garden.

“The lovely, lovely garden!” Marjorie always called it. She had not seen many gardens, nor had Allison, and the wealth of blossoms which covered every spot where the green grass was not growing, was wonderful in their eyes.

The place was kept in order by an old man, who had long been gardener at Esselmont House, and it was as well kept in the absence of the mistress as when she was there to see it. The garden was full of roses, and of the common sweet-smelling flowers, for which there seems little room in fine gardens nowadays, and it was tended by one who loved flowers for their own sake.

It was shut in and sheltered by a high stone wall on the east, and by a hawthorn hedge on the north, but the walls on the other sides were low; and sitting beneath the laburnums near the house, on the upper edge of the sloping lawn, one could see the fields, and the hills, and a farmhouse or two, and the windings of the burn which nearly made an island of the town. From the end of the west wall, where it touched the hawthorn hedge, one could see the town itself. The manse and the kirk could be distinguished, but not very clearly. Seen from the hill the place looked only an irregular group of little grey houses, for the green of the narrow gardens behind was mostly hidden, and even the trees along the lanes seemed small in the distance. But Marjorie liked to look down over it now and then, to make sure that all was safe there when she was away.

It was a strange experience for her to be for hours away from her own home, and even out of the town.

Poor little Marjorie had passed more time on her couch in her mother’s parlour, during her life of eleven years, than in all other places put together. She was happy in the change, and enjoyed greatly the sight of something new, and there were many beautiful things for her to see in Mrs Esselmont’s house. But she needed “to get used with it,” and just at first a day at a time was quite enough for her strength. The day was not allowed to be very long, and the pleasure of getting home again was almost as great as the pleasure of getting away had been. But the best of all was, that the child was getting a little stronger.

There was much besides this to make it a good and happy summer at the manse. The younger lads were busy at school under a new master, who seemed to be in a fair way to make scholars of them all, Robin was full of delight at the thought that at last he was to go to college, and he fully intended to distinguish himself there. He said “at last,” though he was only a month or two past sixteen, and had all his life before him.

“Ay, ye hae a’ ye’re life afore ye, in which to serve the Lord or the Deevil,” Saunners Crombie took the opportunity to say to him, one night after the evening meeting, when he first heard that the lad was to go away.