Morison had a peculiar prejudice against the East, and a personal pique towards the cousin to whose patronage Edmund had betaken himself. His rage was as boundless as his former partiality, and the only consolation his poor wife felt when her darling son left his father’s house, alike impenitent and unblest, was, that her boy’s disposition was originally good, and would probably recover the ascendant; and that it was out of the power of her husband to make his son a beggar as well as an exile. The estate was strictly entailed, and the knowledge of this, while it embittered Morison’s sense of his son’s disobedience, no doubt strengthened the feeling of independence so natural to headstrong youth.
While Morison was perverting legal ingenuity, in vain hopes of being able to disinherit his refractory heir, his unnatural schemes were anticipated by a mightier agent. An epidemic fever carried off, in one short month (about two years after his quitting England), the unreconciled, but no longer unconciliatory exile, and his young and beautiful bride, the daughter of his patron, his union with whom had been construed, by the causeless antipathy of his father, into a fresh cause of indignation. Death, whose cold hand loosens this world’s grasp, and whose deep voice stills this world’s strife, only tightens the bonds of nature, and teaches the stormiest spirits to “part in peace.” Edmund lived to write to his father a few lines of undissembled and unconditional penitence; to own, that if the path of duty had been rugged, he had in vain sought happiness beyond it, and to entreat that the place he had forfeited in his father’s favour might be transferred to his unoffending child.
All this had been conveyed to Mr Monteith and myself by the voice of rumour some days before, and we had been more shocked than surprised to learn that Morison’s resentment had survived its object, and that he disclaimed all intention of ever seeing or receiving the infant boy who, it was gall to him to reflect, must inherit his estate. Mrs Morison had exerted, to soften his hard heart, all the little influence she now possessed. Her tender soul yearned towards her Edmund’s child; and sometimes the thought of seeking a separation, and devoting herself to rear it, crossed her despairing mind. But her daughters were a tie still more powerful to her unhappy home. She could neither leave them, unprotected, to its discomforts, nor conscientiously advise their desertion of a parent, however unworthy; so she wandered, a paler and sadder inmate than before of her cold and stately mansion; and her fair, subdued-looking daughters shuddered as they passed the long-locked doors of their brother’s nursery and schoolroom.
The accounts of young Morison’s death had arrived since the good pastor’s departure, and it was with feelings of equal sympathy towards the female part of the family, and sorrow for the unchristian frame of its head, that he prepared for our present visit. As we rode up the old straight avenue, I perceived a postchaise at the door, and instead of shrinking from this probable accession of strangers, felt that any addition to the usually constrained and gloomy family circle must be a relief. On reaching the door, we were struck with a very unusual appendage to the dusty and travel-stained vehicle, in the shape of an ancient, venerable-looking Asiatic, in the dress of his country, beneath whose ample muslin folds he might easily have been mistaken for an old female nurse, a character which, in all its skill and tenderness, was amply sustained by this faithful and attached Oriental. His broken English and passionate gestures excited our attention, already awakened by the singularity of his costume and appearance; and as we got close to him, the big tears which rolled over his sallow and furrowed cheeks, powerfully called forth our sympathy, and told, better than words, his forcible exclusion from the splendid mansion which had reluctantly admitted within its precincts the child dearer to him than country and kindred!
Our visit (had it borne less of a pastoral character) had all the appearance of being very ill-timed. There were servants running to and fro in the hall, and loud voices in the dining-room; and from a little parlour on one side the front door, issued female sobs, mingled with infant wailings in an unknown dialect.
“Thank God!” whispered the minister, “the bairn is fairly in the house. Providence and nature will surely do the rest.”
It was not a time to intrude abruptly, so we sent in our names to Mr Morison, and during our pretty long detention on horseback, could not avoid seeing in at the open window of the parlour before-mentioned, a scene which it grieved us to think was only witnessed by ourselves.
Mrs Morison was sitting in a chair (on which she had evidently sunk down powerless), with her son’s orphan boy on her knee, the bright dark eyes of the little wild unearthly-looking creature fixed in steadfast gaze on her pale matronly countenance. “No cry, Mama Englise,” said the child, as her big tears rolled unheeded on his bosom—“Billy Edmund will be welly welly good.” His youngest aunt, whose keen and long-repressed feelings found vent in sobs of mingled joy and agony, was covering his little hands with showers of kisses, while the elder (his father’s favourite sister) was comparing behind him the rich dark locks that clustered on his neck with the locket which, since Edmund’s departure, had dwelt next her heart.
A message from the laird summoned us from this affecting sight, and, amid the pathetic entreaties of the old Oriental, that we would restore his nursling, we proceeded to the dining-room, made aware of our approach to it by the still-storming, though half-suppressed imprecations of its hard-hearted master. He was pacing in stern and moody agitation through the spacious apartment. His welcome was evidently extorted, and his face (to use a strong Scripture expression) set as a flint against the voice of remonstrance and exhortation, for which he was evidently prepared. My skilful coadjutor went quite another way to work.
“Mr Morison,” said he, apparently unconscious of the poor man’s pitiable state of mind, “I came to condole, but I find it is my lot to congratulate. The Lord hath taken away with the one hand, but it has been to give with the other. His blessing be with you and your son’s son, whom He hath sent to be the staff and comfort of your age!” This was said with his usual benign frankness, and the hard heart, which would have silenced admonition, and scorned reproof, scarce knew how to repulse the voice of Christian congratulation. He walked about, muttering to himself—“No son of mine—bad breed! Let him go to those who taught his father disobedience, and his mother artifice!—anywhere they please; there is no room for him here.”