For such high-wrought emotions prayer is the only adequate channel. They found vent in it, and were calmed and subdued to the level of ordinary intercourse. The minister kindly addressed Jamie, and drew forth, by his judicious questions, the leading features of that marvellous history of peril and privations, endured by the crew of a Greenland ship detained a winter in the ice, with which all are now familiar, but of which a Parry or a Franklin can perhaps alone appreciate the horrors. They were related with a simplicity that did them ample justice.
“I never despaired, sir,” said the hardy mariner; “we were young and stout. Providence, aye when at the warst, did us some gude turn, and this kept up our hearts. We had mostly a’ wives or mithers at hame, and kent that prayers wadna be wanting for our safety; and little as men may think o’ them on land, or even at sea on a prosperous voyage,—a winter at the Pole makes prayers precious. We had little to do but sleep; and oh, the nights were lang! I was aye a great dreamer; and, ye maunna be angry, sir (to the minister), the seeing Annie and the bairns amaist ilka time I lay down, and aye braw and buskit, did mair to keep up my hopes than a’ the rest. I never could see wee Jamie, though,” said he, smiling, and kissing the child on his knee; “I saw a cradle weel enough, but the face o’ the bit creature in’t I never could mak out, and it vexed me; for whiles I thought my babe was dead, and whiles I feared it had never been born; but God be praised he’s here, and no that unlike mysel neither.”
“Annie!” said the minister, gently loosing her renewed grasp of Jamie’s hand, “you are forgetting your duty as a gudewife—we maun drink to Jamie’s health and happiness ere we go—we’ll steal a glass or two out of old Andrew’s cordial bottle; a drop of this day’s joy will be better to him than it a’.”
“Atweel, that’s true,” said the old father, with a distinctness of utterance, and acuteness of hearing, he had not manifested for many months. The bottle was brought, the health of the day went round; I shook the weather-beaten sailor warmly by the hand, and begging leave to come and hear more of his story at a fitter season, followed the minister to the door.
“Andrew,” said he, giving the little patient equerry a bright new sixpence, “tell your daddy I gave you this for being a dutiful son to your mother when he was at the sea.”
The child’s eye glistened as he ran into the cottage to execute the welcome command, and we rode off, our hearts too full for much communication.
Chapter II.
The day was advancing. These two scenes had encroached deeply on the privileged hours for visiting, and the minister, partly to turn the account of our thoughts into a less agitating channel, partly to balance the delights of the last hour with their due counterpoise of alloy, suggested the propriety of going next to pay, at the house of his patron, the laird of the parish, the visit of duty and ceremony, which his late return, and a domestic affliction in the family, rendered indispensable. There were reasons which made my going equally proper and disagreeable; and formal calls being among the many evils which are lightened by participation, I gladly availed myself of the shelter of the minister’s name and company.
Mr Morison, of Castle Morison, was one of those spoiled children of fortune, whom in her cruel kindness she renders miserable. He had never known contradiction, and a straw across his path made him chafe like a resisted torrent; he had never known sorrow, and was, consequently, but half acquainted with joy; he was a stranger to compassion, and consequently himself an object of pity to all who could allow for the force of early education in searing and hardening the human heart. He had, as a boy, made his mother tremble; it is little to be wondered that in manhood he was the tyrant of his wife and children. Mrs Morison’s spirit, originally gentle, was soon broken; and if her heart was not equally so, it was because she learned reluctantly to despise her tyrant, and found compensation in the double portion of affection bestowed on her by her son and daughters. For the latter, Mr Morison manifested only contempt. There was not a horse in his stable, nor a dog in his kennel, which did not engross more of his attention; but like the foxes and hares which it was the business of these favourite animals to hunt down, girls could be made to afford no bad sport in a rainy day. It was no wonder, that with them fear usurped the place of reverence for such a parent. If they did not hate him, they were indebted to their mother’s piety and their own sweet dispositions; and if they neither hated nor envied their only brother, it was not the fault of him, who, by injudicious distinctions and blind indulgence, laid the foundation for envy and all uncharitableness in their youthful bosoms. In that of his favourite, they had the usual effect of generating self-will and rebellion; and while Jane and Agnes, well knowing nothing they did would be thought right, rarely erred from the path of duty, Edmund, aware that he could scarce do wrong, took care his privileges should not rust for want of exercise.
But though suffered in all minor matters to follow the dictates of caprice, to laugh at his tutor, lame the horse, and break rules (to all others those of the Medes and Persians), with impunity, he found himself suddenly reined up in his headlong career by an equally capricious parent, precisely at the period when restraint was nearly forgotten, and peculiarly irksome. It was tacitly agreed by both parties, that the heir of Castle Morison could only go into the army; but while the guards or a dragoon regiment was the natural enough ambition of Edmund, Morison was suddenly seized with a fit of contradiction, which he chose to style economy, and talked of a marching regiment, with, perhaps an extra £100 per annum to the undoubted heir of nearly ten thousand a-year. Neither would yield—the one had taught, the other learned, stubbornness; and Edmund, backed by the sympathy of the world, and the clamours of his companions, told his father he had changed his mind, and was going to India with a near relation, about to proceed to Bombay in a high official character.