“Have you seen your grandchild yet, Mr Morison?” resumed the minister, nothing daunted by the continued obduracy of the proud laird. “Let me have the joy of putting him into your arms. You must expect to be a good deal overcome; sweet little fellow, there is a strong likeness!”
A shudder passed across the father’s hard frame, and he recoiled as from an adder, when worthy Mr Monteith, gently grasping his arm, sought to draw him, still sullen, though more faintly resisting, towards the other room. A shrill cry of infant agony rose from the parlour as we crossed the hall, and nature never perhaps exhibited a stronger contrast than presented itself between the cruel old man, struggling to escape from the presence of his grandchild, and the faithful ancient domestic shrieking wildly to be admitted into it.
As I threw open the door for the entrance of the former, little Edmund, whose infant promises of good behaviour had soon given way before the continued society of strangers, was stamping in all the impotence of baby rage (and in this unhallowed mood too faithful a miniature of both father and grandfather), and calling loudly for the old Oriental. With the first glance at the door his exclamations redoubled. We began to fear the worst effect from this abrupt introduction; but no sooner had the beautiful boy (beautiful even in passion) cast a second bewildered glance on his still erect and handsome grandfather, than, clapping his little hands, and calling out, “My Bombay papa!” he flew into his arms!
The servants, concluding the interdict removed by their master’s entrance into the apartment, had ceased to obstruct the efforts of the old Hindoo to fly to his precious charge; and while the astonished and fairly overwhelmed Morison’s neck was encircled by the infant grasp of his son’s orphan boy, his knees were suddenly embraced by that son’s devoted and gray-haired domestic.
One arm of little Edmund was instantly loosened from his grandfather’s shoulder, and passed round the neck of the faithful old Oriental, who kissed alternately the little cherub hand of his nursling, and the hitherto iron one of the proud laird. It softened, and the hard heart with it! It was long since love—pure unsophisticated love, and spontaneous reverence—had been Morison’s portion, and they were proportionally sweet. He buried his face in his grandson’s clustering ringlets. We heard a groan deep as when rocks are rending, and the earth heaves with long pent-up fires. It was wildly mingling with childish laughter and hysteric bursts of female tenderness, as, stealing cautiously and unheeded from the spot, we mounted our horses and rode away.
“God be praised!” said the minister, with a deep-drawn sigh, when, emerging from the gloomy avenue, we regained the cheerful beaten track. “This has been a day of strange dispensations, Mr Francis—we have seen much together to make us wonder at the ways of Providence, to soften, and, I hope, improve our hearts. But, after such solemn scenes, mine (and yours, I doubt not, also) requires something to cheer and lighten it; and I am bound where, if the sight of virtuous happiness can do it, I am sure to succeed. Do let me persuade you to be my companion a little longer, and close this day’s visitation at the humble board of, I’ll venture to say, the happiest couple in Scotland. I am engaged to christen the first-born of honest Willie Meldrum and his bonnie Helen, and to dine, of course, after the ceremony. Mrs Monteith and the bairns will be there to meet me; and, as my friend, you’ll be ‘welcome as the flowers in May.’”
After some slight scruples about intruding on this scene of domestic enjoyment, easily overruled by the hearty assurances of the divine, and my own natural relish for humble life, we marched towards the farmhouse of Blinkbonnie; and during our short ride the minister gave me, in a few words, the history of its inmates.
Chapter III.
“I don’t know, Mr Francis, if you remember a bonny orphan lassie, called Helen Ormiston, whom my wife took some years back into the family to assist her in the care of the bairns. Helen was come of no ungentle kin; but poverty had sat down heavily on her father and mother, and sunk them into an early grave; and it was a godsend to poor Helen to get service in a house where poverty would be held no reproach to her. If ye ever saw the creature, ye wadna easily forget her. Many bonnier, blither lassies are to be seen daily; but such a look of settled serenity and downcast modesty ye might go far to find. It quite won my wife’s heart and mine, and more hearts than ours, as I shall tell you presently. As for the bairns, they just doated on Helen, and she on them; and my poor youngest, that is now with God, during all her long, long decline, was little if ever off her knee. No wonder, then, that Helen grew pale and thin, ate little, and slept less. I first set it down to anxiety, and, when the innocent bairn was released, to grief; and from these, no doubt, it partly arose. But when all was over, and when weeks had passed away, when even my poor wife dried her mother’s tears, and I could say, ‘God’s will be done,’ still Helen grew paler and thinner, and refused to be comforted; so I saw there was more in it than appeared, and I bade her open her heart to me; and open it she did, with a flood of tears that would have melted a stone.
“‘Sir,’ said she, ‘I maun go away. I think it will kill me to leave you and Mrs Monteith, and the dear bairns in the nursery, and wee Jeanie’s grave in the kirkyard; but stay I canna, and I will tell you why. It is months, ay, amaist years, since Willie Meldrum, auld Blinkbonnie’s son, fell in fancy wi’ me, and a sair sair heart, I may say, I have had ever sin syne. His auld hard father, they tell me, swears (wi’ sic oaths as wad gar ye grue to hear them) that he will cut him off wi’ a shilling if ever he thinks o’ me; and oh! it wad be a puir return for the lad’s kindness to do him sic an ill turn! so I maun awa out of the country till the auld man dies, or Willie taks a wife to his mind, for I’ve seen ower muckle o’ poverty, Mr Monteith, to be the cause o’t to ony man, though I whiles think it wad be naething to me, that’s sae weel used till’t mysel.’