So Alice stole up stairs to the fireside of her bright dressing-room, to read the long mother’s letter, overflowing with tender counsel and affection, and to weave fair dreams – dreams of joy and honor to that gentle mother, and all things pleasant and prosperous to James – round one unacknowledged centre of her own. Pleasant are those bright dream-mists of youthful reverie, with their vague fairy-land of gladness – pleasant to weave their tinted web, indefinitely rich and glorious, over that universe of golden air, with its long withdrawing vistas – the wealthy future of youth.
But Mrs. Catherine sat still alone, her head bent forward, her keen eyes looking into the blank depths of a mirror on the wall, as though, like the hapless lady in the tale, she could read the wished-for tidings there. The door opened slowly. Jacky, with some strange intuitive knowledge of her mistress’s anxiety, had been on the outlook from the window of the west room, and had now glided down stairs to report. Mrs. Catherine raised her head sharply as the girl’s prefatory “If you please!” fell on her ear.
“What ist’, you elf?”
“If you please,” continued Jacky, “it’s Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, gallopping up the waterside like to break his neck!”
Mrs. Catherine started to her feet.
“Take him to the library – I will be down myself in a moment. Are you lingering, you fairy? Away with you!”
Jacky vanished, and Mrs. Catherine walked hastily through the room.
“He will have gotten tidings!” And then she was still for a moment, in communion with One mightier than man, nerving herself for the “tidings,” whatever they might be.
Jacky stood at the open door as Mr. Ferguson gallopped up, but he did notice the unusual haste with which he was hurried into the library. A cold dew was on his honest forehead; regret and grief were in his kindly heart; the familiar ordinary things about him bore a strange look of change. The difference was in his own agitated eyes, but he did not think of that. Mrs. Catherine stood before him, calm and stern, in the library.
“Mr. Ferguson, you have gotten tidings?”
The firm, strong figure reeled in Mr. Ferguson’s dizzy eyes.
“Mr. Ferguson, you are troubled. Has the prodigal done his worst? Sit down and calm yourself. I am waiting to hear?”
The factor sat down. Mrs. Catherine did not, but, clasping her hands tightly together, stood before him and waited.
“I have bad news, Mrs. Catherine,” said Mr. Ferguson; “worse news, a hundred times, than ever I suspected – than ever you could expect. Strathoran is fallen – ruined! No hope – no possibility of saving him! It is all over!” And the strong man groaned.
“How and wherefore?” said Mrs. Catherine, sternly.
“He has sold his estate – parted with his home and his land to some titled sharper in Paris. Sold! he has done worse – still more dishonorable and fatal than that, he has gambled it away; what his father spent years to redeem, and set free for him, he has staked on the chances of a game. Bear with me, Mrs. Catherine, if I speak bitterly. The young man has disappointed all my hopes – ruined himself – what will become of him?”
Mrs. Catherine stood with her head bowed down, but otherwise firmly erect, and silent.
“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.