might discover the object of his quest, trusting that, from Cuddie’s account of a schism betwixt Burley and his brethren of the Presbyterian persuasion, he might find him less rancorously disposed against Miss Bellenden, and inclined to exert the power which he asserted himself to possess over her fortunes, more favourably than heretofore.
Noontide had passed away when our traveller found himself in the neighbourhood of his deceased uncle’s habitation of Milnwood. It rose among glades and groves that were chequered with a thousand early recollections of joy and sorrow, and made upon Morton that mournful impression, soft and affecting, yet, withal, soothing, which the sensitive mind usually receives from a return to the haunts of childhood and early youth, after having experienced the vicissitudes and tempests of public life. A strong desire came upon him to visit the house itself. “Old Alison,” he thought, “will not know me, more than the honest couple whom I saw yesterday. I may indulge my curiosity, and proceed on my journey, without her having any knowledge of my existence. I think they said my uncle had bequeathed to her my family mansion,— well, be it so. I have enough to sorrow for, to enable me to dispense with lamenting such a disappointment as that; and yet methinks he has chosen an odd successor in my grumbling old dame, to a line of respectable, if not distinguished, ancestry. Let it be as it may, I will visit the old mansion at least once more.”
The house of Milnwood, even in its best days, had nothing cheerful about it; but its gloom appeared to be doubled under the auspices of the old housekeeper. Everything, indeed, was in repair; there were no slates deficient upon the steep grey roof, and no panes broken in the narrow windows. But the grass in the court-yard looked as if the foot of man had not been there for years; the doors were carefully locked, and that which admitted to the hall seemed to have been shut for a length of time, since the spiders had fairly drawn their webs over the door-way and the staples. Living sight or sound there was none, until, after much knocking, Morton heard the little window, through which it was usual to reconnoitre visitors, open with much caution. The face of Alison, puckered with some score of wrinkles in addition to those with which it was furrowed when Morton left Scotland, now presented itself, enveloped in a toy, from under the protection of which some of her grey tresses had escaped in a manner more picturesque than beautiful, while her shrill, tremulous voice demanded the cause of the knocking. “I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson, who resides here,” said Henry.
“She’s no at hame the day,” answered Mrs. Wilson, in propria persona, the state of whose headdress, perhaps, inspired her with this direct mode of denying herself; “and ye are but a mislear’d person to speer for her in sic a manner. Ye might hae had an M under your belt for Mistress Wilson of Milnwood.”
“I beg pardon,” said Morton, internally smiling at finding in old Ailie the same jealousy of disrespect which she used to exhibit upon former occasions,—“I beg pardon; I am but a stranger in this country, and have been so long abroad that I have almost forgotten my own language.” “Did ye come frae foreign parts?” said Ailie; “then maybe ye may hae heard of a young gentleman of this country that they ca’ Henry Morton?”
“I have heard,” said Morton, “of such a name in Germany.”
“Then bide a wee bit where ye are, friend; or stay,— gang round by the back o’ the house, and ye’ll find a laigh door; it’s on the latch, for it’s never barred till sunset. Ye ‘ll open ‘t,— and tak care ye dinna fa’ ower the tub, for the entry’s dark,— and then ye’ll turn to the right, and then ye’ll hand straught forward, and then ye’ll turn to the right again, and ye ‘ll tak heed o’ the cellarstairs, and then ye ‘ll be at the door o’ the little kitchen,— it’s a’ the kitchen that’s at Milnwood now,— and I’ll come down t’ye, and whate’er ye wad say to Mistress Wilson ye may very safely tell it to me.”
A stranger might have had some difficulty, notwithstanding the minuteness of the directions supplied by Ailie, to pilot himself in safety through the dark labyrinth of passages that led from the back-door to the little kitchen; but Henry was too well acquainted with the navigation of these straits to experience danger, either from the Scylla which lurked on one side in shape of a bucking tub, or the Charybdis which yawned on the other in the profundity of a winding cellar-stair. His only impediment arose from the snarling and vehement barking of a small cocking spaniel, once his own property, but which, unlike to the faithful Argus, saw his master return from his wanderings without any symptom of recognition.
“The little dogs and all!” said Morton to himself, on being disowned by his former favourite. “I am so changed that no breathing creature that I have known and loved will now acknowledge me!”
At this moment he had reached the kitchen; and soon after, the tread of Alison’s high heels, and the pat of the crutch-handled cane which served at once to prop and to guide her footsteps, were heard upon the stairs,— an annunciation which continued for some time ere she fairly reached the kitchen.
Morton had, therefore, time to survey the slender preparations for housekeeping which were now sufficient in the house of his ancestors. The fire, though coals are plenty in that neighbourhood, was husbanded with the closest attention to economy of fuel, and the small pipkin, in which was preparing the dinner of the old woman and her maid-of-all-work, a girl of twelve years old, intimated, by its thin and watery vapour, that Ailie had not mended her cheer with her improved fortune.
When she entered, the head, which nodded with self-importance; the features, in which an irritable peevishness, acquired by habit and indulgence, strove with a temper naturally affectionate and good-natured; the coif; the apron; the blue-checked gown,— were all those of old Ailie; but laced pinners, hastily put on to meet the stranger, with some other trifling articles of decoration, marked the difference between Mrs. Wilson, life-rentrix of Milnwood, and the housekeeper of the late proprietor.
“What were ye pleased to want wi’ Mrs. Wilson, sir? I am Mrs. Wilson,” was her first address; for the five minutes time which she had gained for the business of the toilet entitled her, she conceived, to assume the full merit of her illustrious name, and shine forth on her guest in unchastened splendour. Morton’s sensations, confounded between the past and present, fairly confused him so much that he would have had difficulty in answering her, even if he had known well what to say. But as he had not determined what character he was to adopt while concealing that which was properly his own, he had an additional reason for remaining silent. Mrs. Wilson, in perplexity, and with some apprehension, repeated her question.
“What were ye pleased to want wi’ me, sir? Ye said ye kend Mr. Harry Morton?”
“Pardon me, madam,” answered Henry, “it was of one Silas Morton I spoke.” The old woman’s countenance fell.
“It was his father, then, ye kent o’, the brother o’ the late Milnwood? Ye canna mind him abroad, I wad think,— he was come hame afore ye were born. I thought ye had brought me news of poor Maister Harry.”
“It was from my father I learned to know Colonel Morton,” said Henry; “of the son I know little or nothing,— rumour says he died abroad on his passage to Holland.”
“That’s ower like to be true,” said the old woman with a sigh, “and mony a tear it’s cost my auld een. His uncle, poor gentleman, just sough’d awa wi’ it in his mouth. He had been gieing me preceeze directions anent the bread and the wine and the brandy at his burial, and how often it was to be handed round the company (for, dead or alive, he was a prudent, frugal, painstaking man), and then he said, said he, ‘Ailie,’ (he aye ca’d me Ailie; we were auld acquaintance), ‘Ailie, take ye care and haud the gear weel thegither; for the name of Morton of Milnwood ‘s gane out like the last sough of an auld sang.’ And sae he fell out o’ ae dwam into another, and ne’er spak a word mair, unless it were something we cou’dna mak out, about a dipped candle being gude eneugh to see to dee wi’. He cou’d ne’er
