“What will he do?” repeated the distressed factor, “what can he do? land and name, fortune and character, all lost. What has he left, as he says, but despair—with his prospects too, his fair beginning. O, it is enough to make a man distracted! What have they done, that unhappy race, that they should be constantly thus—father and son, a wise man and a prodigal, the one wasting his substance and his inheritance, the other denying himself the lawful pleasures of a just life to win it back again.”
“Comfort yourself, Robert Ferguson,” said Mrs. Catherine, bitterly, as drawing forward a chair with emphatic rapidity, she seated herself at the table, “there will be no son of the name again to waste years in building up the house of Strathoran: their history has come to an end—fitly ended in a rioter and a prodigal.”
The factor looked up deprecatingly, the very words which his excitement brought to his own lips, sounding harsh from another’s.
“Mrs. Catherine, Mr. Archibald is young. When other lads were leaving school or entering college, he was launched upon the world his own master, with a great income and a large estate.—You know how easily the light spirit of youth is moved, but you cannot know how the way of a young man is hedged in with temptations—Mrs. Catherine!” the factor raised his hand in appeal.
“Speak not to me,” said Mrs. Catherine, “I know! yes truly, I know more than you think, or give me credit for. Temptations! and what is obedience that has never been tried, or strength that has not been exercised in needful resistance? I bid ye listen to me, Robert Ferguson—was there not a test appointed in Eden? and would you set youself to say that the fool of a woman (that I should say so, who am of her lineage and blood!) might be justified for her ill-doing, because the fruit hung fair upon the tree, and tempted the wandering eye of her? Think better of my judgment and bring no such pleas to me.”
“What can I bring? What can I say?” said Mr. Ferguson, in a low voice. “Is he to be left to live or die, as he best can, in yon strange country? Are we to let him sink into a professional gamester, like the men who have ruined him? I speak wildly.—He would never do that. I myself must seek, in some other place, a livelihood for my family; and I will get it; for my work is clear before me, and it is known that I can do what I undertake; but for him, Mrs. Catherine, with no friend in this wide world but yourself, who can give him efficient help—with not an acre but these poor lands of Loelyin and Lochend, which are still entailed; and, worse than all that, with his best years lost, his principles unsettled, and a stain upon his name—what is to become of him?”
“He will drink the beverage he has brewed,” said Mrs. Catherine, harshly. “He will have the reward of the waster, as I have told you before now. Let him take his wages—let him want now, as he has sinfully wasted. It is his righteous hire and reward.”
“And you can see that, can think of that, and not stretch out a hand to him?” cried the factor, nervously, as he rose from his chair. “Except my hand and my head, Mrs. Catherine Douglas, I have no inheritance; and your estate yields gold to you, greater every year; but, before I see want come to Strathoran’s son, I will labor night and day. The professions are open to him yet.—His mother’s uncle was a Lord of Session; his father’s cousin was the greatest physician in Edinburgh. I bid you good morning, Mrs. Catherine. I have to write to Mr. Archibald, without loss of time.”
“Sit down upon your seat, this moment,” said Mrs. Catherine, authoritatively, “and do not speak to me like a fool, Robert Ferguson. Let me hear Archie Sutherland’s story, the worst and the best of it; and spend a pound of your own siller on the rioter, at your peril! As if I did not know one lad at the college was enough for any man. Sit down upon your seat, and tell me the whole story, as I bid you, this moment; or I vow to you, that your young advocate, if he had his gown the morn, shall get no pleas of mine!”
Mr. Ferguson sat down, well pleased, and taking out a letter, laid it silently before Mrs. Catherine. The letter was long, blurred, uneven, and written, as it seemed, in hurried intervals, with breaks and incoherent dashes of the pen between. It was not either very clear or very coherent; but it told how rent and distracted the writer’s heart and spirit were, and what a ceaseless struggle raged and contended there. The large soft folds of Mrs. Catherine’s shawl shook as if a wind had stirred them, but she did not speak; the moisture gathered thick beneath her large eyelid, but was not shed, for Mrs. Catherine was not given to tears. At last she closed the letter carefully, occupying much more time in the operation than was necessary, and endeavored to assume her former caustic tone to hide her graver emotions. “A fine story to come to a gentlewoman withal! well, Mr. Ferguson, and what is it your purpose that I should do for your rioter?”