Lawrence Ross.”
Anne laid down the letter, her eyes full of grateful tears, almost joyful in their tremulous solemnity. There was sorrow, and labor, and darkness in the way—there was not crime. The blessed belief came into her soul in solemn sunshine—the cloud rolled off her head. A strange invigoration was in every vein. Norman was alive! alive to receive the triumphant acquittal of justice—alive to be saved! She opened his letter, her tears falling thick upon it: other drops had fallen there before—the tears of the old man’s agony. She read it.
“Before you see this, they will have told you that I am a murderer. It is not so, father: believe a despairing man, it is not so. Arthur Aytoun has done me wrong: but I would not have put a hair of his head in peril. I would have guarded him with my own life. Wherever he is, be it in joy or misery, he bears me witness, before God, that I am innocent of his blood. Father my heart is like to burst. What can I say to you—my hand is clean. I am innocent!—I am innocent! there is no blood upon my soul. And yet I dare not venture to trust myself to a trial, with every circumstance against me. I have nothing for it but flight. To-night I go further away—I know not where—under cover of the darkness, like a felon and a criminal, as men will call me. It gnaws at my very heart. I would rather have died a thousand times—a cold-blooded, cowardly murderer! Father, father! you will not believe it of your son!
“They would find me guilty if I remained—they could not fail to find me guilty—and the disgrace of a fugitive will be less upon our house and name than the disgrace of a convicted murderer, dying a shameful death. It is like a coward to fly. I am a coward. I do not dare to meet that fatal judgment. I could not bear to hear myself called guilty, with my innocence strong in my heart. I have a suspicion, too—a terrible fear and suspicion—and I must fly. Father, I can say no more, even to you. I am a sinful man before God; but my hand is as pure of blood, as when I stood beside you on Oranside, before death had ever entered Merkland. They know in Heaven—if they can see my unhappy fortunes—my mother, Lawrence, Edward—they know that I am innocent. I do not know what I say. My thoughts are wandering like a sick man’s. Father, I am innocent!
“Marion is with me—she is my wife. We have escaped from the sea in peril of our lives—they will tell you I have perished in it—I would I had, but for Marion. Father, you may never hear from me, or of me, again; but again remember, I am innocent—this blood does not stand between God and me. Why this fearful cloud has covered us, He knows who sent it. It may depart yet, in His good time. For this unjust world, farewell, father. We will meet where there are no false accusations—where God himself shall vindicate the right. I become patient—I become trustful. Father, pray—pray that I may live to be cleared of this horror—that the curse may be taken from my name—that I may be acknowledged guiltless.
N. R. R.”
Norman Rutherford’s sister was kneeling before his portrait—her clasped hands holding her forehead, her eyes raining hot tears, her soul poured out before God. Norman was alive—could be prayed for, hoped for, toiled for. The curse was turned into a blessing. The path was wintry still, and bare, and laborious; but that horrible spectre of blood was gone; and the majestic presence of justice, and the clear rays of hope, were on the way instead. She was able for all labor, all patience, all sorrow in his cause. Norman was innocent.
Anna rose at length, folded the precious letters carefully, placed them in her bosom, and then hastily descended the stair, and set out again for the old nurse’s cottage, to learn, according to her original intention, the particulars of this dark history there. The Oran moaned no more, but only murmured plaintively, between his banks, the kindly song of home; and Anne, as she passed under the trees, almost with a light heart, murmured to herself the prayer of Alice Aytoun’s song—for the wayfaring man.
CHAPTER XI.
ESTHER Fleming, Norman Rutherford’s nurse, lived in a cottage by herself, not far from Merkland. When the first Mrs. Ross’s first son was born, Esther had entered her service as “bairns’-maid,” had left it again to be married, and after a brief period of two years had returned a youthful widow, with one boy infant of her own, between whose birth and Norman’s there was but some brief intervals of weeks. Esther had remained the head of Mrs. Ross’s nursery through the vicissitudes of all the succeeding years; had received into her charge infant after infant of Mrs. Ross’s family, and with grief, less only than the mother’s, had seen the tender blossoms fall one by one into the family grave: but Norman was peculiarly her own—a tie especially tender attached the generous, manly boy, to his foster-mother; and when her own handsome sailor-lad, returned from his first voyage, stood up to measure his height with that of his playmate and comrade, Esther’s overflowing eye looked with scarce less partial pride upon Norman Rutherford than upon William Fleming. When Mrs. Ross herself died, the little Anne became the object of Esther’s devoted and unceasing care, although her removal from Merkland to the cottage she now occupied took place before the second marriage of Mr. Ross; but even after that event, bitterly as the faithful servant resented it, Esther continued, for her delicate nurseling’s sake, to hold her footing in Merkland, and to pay daily visits to her old dominion in the nursery, asserting against all comers, and in face of the new darling, Lewis himself, the rights and privileges of “Miss Anne.” But when Anne was still a child, a blight fell upon Esther Fleming; the self-same blight, which brought the gray hairs of Norman Rutherford’s father in sorrow to the grave. The old nurse, stronger, or more tenacious of life, had borne her sorrow silently, and marked it more by her utter seclusion from the rustic society round her, than by any other demonstration. She had a little niece living with her, to manage her small domestic concerns, and except through this girl and Anne, Esther had no intercourse with the world—the very brief and quiet world—about her. Her house stood on a high bank of the Oran, with a pathway winding before it; and the grassy descent, dark with old trees and bushes, shelving steeply down behind. Within, the little dwelling consisted of two apartments, perfectly clean and neat (as is, indeed, much more usual in our Scottish cottage than southern readers give us credit for,) though without any attempt at ornament, except the two or three small profile portraits of children, which hung over the mantlepiece of the outer room, the only existing memorials of the dead sons and daughters of the house of Merkland, which Esther had rescued from their disgrace, in the lumber-room, after Mr. Ross’s death.