The old woman uttered a cry—a low, wild, unconscious cry. She might have done the same had it been bitter sorrow that overwhelmed her, instead of a very agony and deluge of joy and thankfulness. She threw her apron over her head—under its covering they could see the motion of her hands, the bowing of her head. Prayers innumerable, offered by night and day for eighteen years, that had lain unanswered till this time, before yon Throne in Heaven, were pouring back upon her now in a flood of blessedness. It was meet that they should stand apart in silent reverence, while thus, in the presence of the Highest, His old and faithful servant rendered thanks, where so long she had poured forth her petition for mercy.
At last she raised her head—her clear and kindly features trembling yet with the storm of joy that had swept over them; her eye fell upon the child. She had seen Lilie once or twice before, but never before in this strong light which tinged everything with a remembrance of Norman. She started to her feet: “Wha are ye, bairn? wha are ye?—for ony sake, Miss Anne, tell me wha this is?”
Anne took Lilie’s hand, and led her to Esther’s side; the child looked up wonderingly with those large dark wistful eyes of hers, almost as Christian Lilie had been wont to look—Anne placed her in the arms of her father’s devoted, loving friend. “Esther, you have a better right to her than I—she is my brother’s child—she is the daughter of Norman, for whom you have sorrowed and prayed so long.”
And Marjory Falconer stood apart, repeating to herself in a low voice, which trembled sometimes, that Psalm, the blessing of the good man, sung by the Hebrew people in the old time, as they journeyed to Jerusalem, and familiar now to us in Scotland, as the household words of our own land—
“Behold each man that fears the Lord,
Thus blessed shall he be,
The Lord shall out of Sion send,
His blessing unto thee,
Thou shalt Jerusalem’s good behold,
While thou on earth dost dwell,
Thou shalt thy children’s children see,
And peace on Israel!”
CHAPTER XXX.
THE months travelled on peacefully; Jeanie Coulter and Walter Foreman were married with all due mirth and rejoicing. Ada Mina was reigning now, in the absence of all rival powers, acknowledged belle and youthful beauty of Strathoran; and had been thrown into an immense flutter, to the great dismay and manifest injury of a young Muirland laird from the west, who had come to take lessons in agriculture from Mr. Coulter, and was very assiduously paying court to Mr. Coulter’s daughter—by a hint from Mrs. Catherine, of a possible visit to the Tower of the Honorable Giles. Little Harry Coulter, the Benjamin of Harrows, was more desperately in love than ever with the stranger Lilie, now living at Merkland, in her full dignity as Merkland’s niece; and with his first knife had already constructed, with mighty deliberation and care, a splendid model of a patent plough, to be laid at the small feet of his liege lady, who unfortunately had no manner of appreciation of patent ploughs, and greatly preferred Charlie Ferguson’s present, a boat—a veritable boat with little white silken sails, elaborated in the Woodsmuir nursery by Mary Ferguson and Flora Macalpine, and which could actually, with a fairy cargo of moss and ruddy autumnal wild-flowers, make genuine voyages upon the Oran, to the delight of Lilie and the Woodsmuir party, and the immense disgust of Harry Coulter. Lilie was becoming a great pet at Merkland, “evendown spoiled,” as Mrs. Melder said, with the slightest possible tinge of jealousy; the constant companion and pupil of Anne, the plaything of Lewis, and even—so great was the witchery of the fair fresh childhood—a favorite with Mrs. Ross herself, whom aunt Anne taught Lilie to approach with the greatest reverence, and to call grand-mamma—mamma would not do. Lilie stoutly resisted the bestowal of that sacred name upon any individual except the one enthroned in the loyal little heart, the bonniest of all existent ladies; the especial mother of the loving child.
In the beginning of winter, Anne paid her promised visit to Christian, carrying little Lilie with her. New life was budding again in the large melancholy heart which had lived through a lingering death for so many years. A deep sorrow, and tender remembrance of the dead carried about with her in religious silence, shunning common sight and common comment, did not prevent this. It was not meet that the griefs of such a spirit should pass lightly away, or was it possible; but bordering the deep stillness of that lasting sorrow were other holds on life. Hope for Marion, the little sister of her happier days; reverent enjoyment of God’s mercies, which one who had bowed to His chastisements so long was not like to hold lightly; a sympathy, exquisitely deep and tender, with everything of nature, and much of humanity—all swelling up from the strong vitality, healthful and pure and heaven-dependant, which God had placed, as a fountain in his servant’s heart, before He laid her mighty load upon her.
Anne and the child remained for a considerable time with Christian. She had settled again in the old cottage, and was already making arrangements for the repair of Redheugh. When Anne parted with her, it was in the confidence of meeting her again in the end of the year, when Norman and Marion should have returned; a light passed over the wan face, as Christian said those words, but still she did not say from whence the exiles were to return. Anne could not press the question, and the time was not very long to wait. Lilie returned with her to Merkland.
The year waned; the December days again darkened over the sky of Strathoran. Mr. Lumsden of Portoran had refurnished his Manse, in a style which utterly scandalized Mrs. Bairnsfather.—Some one presented him with a whole library of additional books—the same individual that had lately put into his hand money enough to build a school-house in the hamlet at Oran Brig, at which already masons and joiners were working merrily, and under whose shelter Mr. Lumsden himself had vowed to preach, let the Presbytery storm as it pleased. Mrs. Bairnsfather moved her husband to appeal the case to the Assembly this time, if the Synod’s thunders proved unavailing. Mr. Bairnsfather, very much disgusted as he was—was dubious. A certain mighty man in an obscure Fife parish, lying on the south side of the Tay—a wondrous visionary man, who seeing the first experiments made with gas in the streets of the mighty cities, had tubes laid for the conveyance of the same to the pleasant parlors of that rural Manse of Kilmany, had discovered a mighty truth by that time, and was beginning to throw the rays of it from that marvellous lamp of his, over the Tay, to be over all Scotland ere long. The truth that preaching proprieties would not do; that ministers of Christ’s holy evangel must preach Christ—nothing less, and that the name of the Lord was the strong Tower—it and no other—in which purity of soul and life could be kept unsullied and undimmed for ever. And vigorous athletic forces, whose front rank, among other sons of Anak, stood that restless man of might and labor, so long called fire-brand and fanatic, the Rev. John Lumsden of Portoran, were pressing into the highest places of the Church, with this greatest of Scottish men at their head. So Mr. Bairnsfather sagaciously, over his gardening, resolved that it might be well to proceed with caution in this matter, and that the eye of a General Assembly in this great renewing of its youth, might see shortcomings in his own ministerial life and conversation, not particularly adapted for the light of the day; in consequence of which prudent doubts Mr. Lumsden escaped a call to the bar of the supreme judicatory of the Church.