And then a subdued and tender radiance came shining from the eyes of the returned son. He led Mrs. Ross to her chair—he called her mother. In the revulsion of his generous heart, thinking he had done her wrong, he forgot the dark wedding-day long ago which had brought her, a strange ruler, to Merkland, and which he spent by his own mother’s grave. With Lilie on the little stool at her feet, and Norman doing her reverence, and all the rest joyous and glad about her, Mrs. Ross forgot it also.
He was to return to Merkland, she insisted, with his wife, their sister, and their son. The old house would hold them all. Norman’s dark eyes brightened into deep radiance. He kissed the harsh step-mother’s hand—he had done her wrong.
Then he drew Anne’s arm through his own once more, and leaving Lilie in the carriage, in charge of Mrs. Catherine’s careful coachman, went down Oranside to Esther Fleming’s cottage; but in Esther’s recognition there was neither pause nor doubt. The manly bronzed cheek, the dark hair with its streaks of grey—she did not linger to look at these. She heard the light elastic step, the voice so dearly known of old—and it was her beautiful laddie, her bairn, her son—not the grave man, who had more than reached the highest arch of his life—about whose neck the old woman threw her withered arms, as she lifted up her voice and wept.
At last they reached Portoran. The Marion, the little sister of Christian Lillie, had a face of thoughtful gracious beauty, such as gladdens the eye and heart alike; a saintly peaceful face, in which the strength of Christian and the weakness of Patrick were singularly blended, for she was like them both. The plough of sorrow had not carved its iron furrows on her fair brow, as it had done on Christian’s. The sunshine of her smile was only chastened with natural tears for the dead brother who had gone to his rest; he was not her all in all as he had been Christian’s.
No, for the little girl rejoicing in a childish exuberance of joy and tenderness already in her arms; the beautiful, bold, gallant boy, who stood beside her chair; the radiant dark face of the father and husband looking upon them with tremulous delight and pride—had all a share. Christian too, whose heroic work was done, and the new-found sister Anne; there was warm room for them all in the large heart of Marion Rutherford. The burning fire of bitter grief had not intensified her love upon one—she was the family head, the house-mother—full of all gracious affections and sympathies, hopes and happiness.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MRS. Ross was inspired—how or by what means we are not sufficiently good metaphysicians to be able to specify—but inspired she was! It might be that all the court that had been paid to her of late had softened the adamantine heart: it only concerns us to know that softened it was. She took immediate counsel with May; she had fires lighted in half a dozen bed-chambers. Then the wainscotted parlor was made radiant—a fire in its grate “enough,” as Duncan said with an involuntary grumble, “to keep the decent folk at the Brig of Oran in eliding frae this till Canlemas”—and additional candles upon its table. Then Mrs. Ross did something more wonderful than all this—the very climax and copestone of her unwonted melting of heart. She sent Duncan mysteriously up stairs to the attic lumber-room with secret instructions. May and Barbara lingered in wonder to what was coming.
A great thing was coming—covered with dust, and grumbling audibly, Duncan re-appeared in ten minutes, carrying in his arms a picture—the portrait of the lost son of the house of Merkland—the boy’s face of the exiled Norman, dethroned from its standing in his father’s house for eighteen weary year.
It was restored again now, and when Mrs. Ross having dismissed the servants sat down alone in her bright room, through the dark polished walls of which the warm lights were gleaming pleasantly, to wait for her guests; the unclouded sunshine of the bold, frank, fearless boy’s face shone upon her for the first time. It had enough of the indefinite family resemblance, to bring her own Lewis before her mind. Lewis had gone up to the Tower, but was to return immediately. His mother sat in the parlor alone, more cheerily than was her wont, for the blood was warming about her heart.
And then they arrived—the whole of them, with all their different manifestations of joy; the mother Marion starting in delight at what she thought the portrait of her own bright Lawrie, and Norman himself heaping up in such generous measure his delicate amends of honor and attention to the step-mother, whom he fancied he had wronged. She remembered him so different once, in his impetuous youth, that the compliment was all the greater now.